Brand New Blood
by King of Monsters
Summary: A new version of the story New Blood by Firebane5. Read, and enjoy.
1. Chapter 1

Prologue:

This is the new version of New Blood originally made by Firebane5, now taken over by me with his consent, all characters of Shaman King belong to their owner/creator and the main oc in the story is Firebane5's oc but has undergone slight changes with Firebane5's permission. Some ocs are belonging to me though, but they arn't featured till later on. The story will begin as Firebane5 had made it but later on its all my original works. Enjoy

Chapter 1

It was dull grey day; you know the type. The air is hot and humid making it impossible to go anywhere without getting drenched despite the fact it's not raining. Even though it's only 1pm the streets are deserted and only the vague illuminations from office windows show that there are actually people in the town.

A man suddenly exits one of the buildings and starts on a brisk walk, but soon slows down due to the humidity. He is wearing a grey suit which is beginning to turn black due the moisture in the air and he is carrying a black briefcase, which he keeps glancing at every few seconds as if to check that it's still there.

A roll of thunder is heard in the clouds and it begins rain, the man starts running seeking any kind of shelter, eventually he spots a bus stop and rushes over to get out of the rain. He sits down and places his briefcase on his lap and starts to open it┘

"You're not helping."

The man looks round startled because he had thought the bus stop to be empty, but in the corner was a figure in a dark grey rain coat.

"I beg your pardon?" said the man but the figure just ignored him.

Curious the man turned round for a closer look at the figure and was surprised to see that it was a boy who looked to be around 15 years old, with jet black hair which was soaking wet and covered most of his face because it was so long, but the man could also see that the boy had ice blue eyes that seemed to focused on some point on the ceiling. The man glanced at the ceiling but saw nothing. He glanced back at the boy and was just thinking that he could use a haircut when the boy spoke suddenly, his voice full of venom.

"When I want your opinion I'll ask for it."

The man was shocked, he was sure he hadn't said anything and was about to offer an apology when he realised that the boy had not addressed him but seemed to talking to a patch of space near the ceiling.

The boy twisted his head suddenly as if he had only just realized that the man was there and gave him a cold glare until he got up and left.

"Really master if you had wanted to get wet we could have just stayed home, I don't see why we had to pay all this money to come and get wet in Japan." The voice belonged to a creature that could only be seen by its master and a few others. It was a spirit. It was standing behind the back of the bench barely even moving.

In appearance it would be described as a crow. A very big crow. But it had some very interesting attributes.

It had the usual features of the birds of its kind: black feathers, a black beak. But it had some very strange add-ons. On its head from under the feathers were what looked like long, swept back dread lock-like spines. Its feet were taloned, and it had a long black tail with two long feathers almost as long as its tail flowing down. Its eyes had no color and were like mirrors of white mercury.

The crow beast's eyes suddenly twitched into curves at his master's response.

"You're not helping." Replied the ghost's master in a dull monotone. A boy who appeared to be around 15 but could have easily been mistaken for much older, his eyes were ice blue and had a dark quality to them which seemed to suggest that the boy had seen too much of the darker things in life.

"Sorry master I just thought that I should inform you that this is not the wisest form of action you have taken. I humbly request that we go and seek a better form of shelter, preferably one where you may get the rest that you require."

"When I want your opinion I'll ask for it." was the boys reply, his voice full of venom. He suddenly heard a movement to his left and noticed a man had entered the bus stop presumably seeking shelter just as he had. At the moment however the boy did not feel like sharing the small space the bus stop provided and gave the man a cold glare; the kind he had used so many times in the past. The man shifted uncomfortably under the boys gaze and eventually got up collected his briefcase and walked back out into the rain.

"That was not very polite, you could have easily shared the space with him." he heard his ghost say, the boy scowled and seemed about to reply but he paused and seemed to take a moment to collect himself and when he spoke his voice had returned to the calm tone he had used earlier.

"Nice try Weiss but you won't make me angry that easily so enough of your mind games, lets go and find some place to rest."

"I thought you didn't need to rest."

" I don't, but I have no doubt that the man I just sent out into the rain will go inform the local authorities that there is a boy at this bus stop who is delirious and is muttering to himself, so lets go."

Earlier that day:

"Aww come on guys it's the coolest film this year" cried Horo jumping around the room in excitement.

"I'll go with you Trey," Manta announced "I've been wanting to see this movie for ages, what about you Rio?"

"I think not little man, I have better things to do that sit in a little theatre and watch an oversized TV." said Rio.

"Like what?" muttered his green guardian ghost the ex-thief Tokageroh.

"I have lots of important things to do!" cried Rio jumping up from his seat "First I have to-"

"But Rio it's got biker girls in it." said Manta slyly.

"On second thought maybe I could make room in my busy schedule."said Rio causing everyone in the room to sweat drop anime style.

"Awesome, Rio's in, how about you Ren?" asked Horohoro.

"I'd rather not waste my time watching you buffoons throw popcorn at each other." Ren said with his usual skepticism.

"But there are some really cool fight scenes and main character uses a weapon that's almost exactly like your Kwan-do, you might learn some new moves." said Horo trying to persuade Ren.

"I doubt I'd ever learn anything from a movie." muttered Ren darkly, although he now seemed quite interested.

Just then Yoh opens the front door; he is panting heavily and is carrying an armful of grocery's that Anna had ordered him to get within the next 20 minutes or there would be dire consequences.

"How'd I do?" Yoh gasped.

"Not bad Yoh you actually did it with 4 minutes to spare." replied Manta checking his watch.

"Oh thank god I thought I was done for." said Yoh dropping onto a couch.

"But Manta isn't your watch 5 minutes slow." said Horo.

"Oh yeah." replied Manta now looking slightly worried.

"Yoh you're one minute late so why are you lying down on the couch when I need that food to cook dinner?" It was Anna, Yoh's fiance her voice had a cold and deadly edge to it.

"Well you see Anna I just-"

SLAP

"How do you expect to me cook dinner without any food? Do you want our guests to go hungry?" Said Anna indicating to everyone in the room (Ren, Manta, Horohoro, Rio, Jun, Pilika, Tamao.)

"You're right Anna you do way too much around the house you should have a night off." said Manta quickly trying to get Yoh out of trouble, "We could all go and see this movie, it'll be nice and relaxing what do you say?"

"No." replied Anna flatly.

"Come on Anna you'll enjoy it," pleaded Yoh picking up on Manta's ploy "and how about after the movie we all go out for dinner my treat, you won't have to cook or clean, come on Anna please."

Anna was silent for a while but in the end agreed. So just as the gang were getting all ready to go Anna told Yoh "This is a very nice thing your doing Yoh."

"Well I thought you deserved a day off after a all your hard work."

"Thanks Yoh but you still owe me 8000 push ups, 5000 sit ups and 6000 laps around the block for coming back late and don't forget to lock the door."


	2. Chapter 2

I own nothing...yet

"What about this place master?" suggested a flying Weiss gesturing towards a large inn which seemed to be an Inn despite the fact it only had two floors with his beak.

"Would you drop the 'master' part, I don't see why you insist on using these old fashioned titles; I have a name you know, why don't you use it?"

"That would not be correct. You are my master." answered Weiss sternly.

"Very well have it your way, lets go and see if they any spare rooms."

The boy marched through the rain towards the building that his guardian ghost had suggested. He was soaked to the skin and truth be told he would have stopped under a billboard sign if his guardian ghost had suggested it.

He walked up to the front door and knocked, there was no reply he knocked twice more before he attempted to open the front door, which yielded freely.

Puzzled the boy walked inside and began to take in his surroundings. It was fashioned in typical Japanese style; that is to say there was no sort of furniture anywhere since people in Japan seemed quite content to sit on the floor all the time. He then walked around a corner and realized that he was mistaken; at the back of the new room was an extremely large couch and opposite the couch was what looked liked a T.V., although he couldn't be sure because it looked older than Weiss.

"Hello anyone home?" he called. There was no reply.

"Weiss do you sense anyone in there?" whispered the young shaman.

"No master no one, not even a human."

"Strange why would they leave without locking the door?"

"I'm not sure master. It does not seem to be what you would call a logical course of action."

"Indeed not but don't concern yourself Weiss I'm sure we'll find out in due time. He moved away from his spirit, placed his belongings in the front hallway and started to explore the rest of building.

"Does that mean you intend to stay master?"

"Well I have no intention of going back outside until it stops raining (roll of thunder) and it seems that may take a while."

"May I suggest master that you take this opportunity to get some rest, I shall alert you when the owner returns?"

"All in good time my friend I wish to explore a little more, and if you call me 'master' one more time I shall lock you in your memorial tablet for a week." answered the shaman.

"My apologies my lord."

"Was that a joke Weiss?" asked the boy looking up at his companion with a strange expression on his face.

"Yes my lord was it not amusing?" replied the beast spirit frowning with his eyes.

"Well it was better than other things I've heard." said the shaman as he moved into another room; this one had a bed and was covered in posters of what appeared to the boy to be pictures of the same frozen Mountain from different angles there was also... "A snowboard, who would bring a snowboard to Japan in the middle of summer?" said the shaman his brow knitted with confusion.

"Actually my lord I do believe that the altitude of the Japanese mountains ensures that-" started Weiss but he was cut short by his master's yawn.

"Whatever, look I'm going to get some rest why don't you just keep look out, whoever lives here has got to comeback sooner or later."

"My lord, one thing has occurred to me, what will you tell the owners when they come back?"

"Don't worry Weiss I'll think of something, after all they owe me a favor."

"They do?" replied the warrior spirit in shock.

"Yes I'm guarding their home; the least they could do is let me spend one night."

"I'm not sure that will work my lord." Weiss started to say before realizing that his master had already fallen asleep.

------------------

"I'll see you guys later, Pailong and I are going to head back to get some sleep" said the green haired Doshi.

"How can you even think about sleep after watching that movie?" Cried Horo in amazement "I mean that Ninja dude kicked ass and don't even get me started on the special effects!"

"Actually I found it quite boring, I don't see what's interesting about a man in a black suit beating other guys to a pulp." said Jun stifling a yawn.

"Whatever, hey Ren your sister is weird." said Horo in disbelief.

Jun turned around and winced as she heard the stick end of her brothers Kwan-do connect with Horo's face.

'When will he learn not to take things so seriously?' She thought to herself.

"Hey dude what was that for!" exclaimed Horo.

"To teach you a lesson." replied Ren with deceptive calmness.

"And what lessons that?" said Horo angrily.

"To not insult a Tao."

"What are you talking about spike head, all I said was OW!" Ren had hit Horo with Kwan-do again, with considerable more force than last time. Horo then got up and started calling Ren more names and the two would have started fighting had their friends not restrained them.

Jun sighed "Some things never change." She collected the door key from Yoh and made her way back to the Asakura house with Lee Pailong.

Running through the rain Jun made it back Yoh's house surprisingly quickly and had just made it to the shelter of the front door when the rain suddenly stopped.

"Typical." muttered Jun silently cursing the Japanese weather.

"Is something wrong Jun." asked Pailong his voice full of concern.

"What, Oh no I was thinking out loud could you please open the door. I did give you the key didn't I?"

"Yes Jun you did." said Pailong walking up to the and as he inserted the key into the door which then seemed to open of its own accord.

"Looks like Yoh forget to lock the door again." said Jun smiling ruefully "It's a good thing I got here first otherwise Anna would have killed him." Jun then stepped into the hallway and noticed a dark rain coat drying above a pair of soaking wet trainers that she didn't recognize.

"Pailong," she whispered, "I think we have an uninvited guest."

"Don't worry Jun I'll take of it." Answered Pailong bowing as he walked away to search for the intruder.

--------------------------

"Master wake up" Weiss hissed in his master's ear.

"Huh? What's going on?" muttered the shaman sleepily.

"Master I believe that the owner has arrived, but he does not appear very hospitable you may be in danger."

"Very well what do you advise?"

"I humbly suggest that we unify so that we may deal with the problem if it arises, I also request that you let me do the talking as you do have a tendency to-"

"To what?" asked the master darkly.

"Well you do have a habit of escalating problems master."

To Weiss's surprise his master chuckled slightly.

"Yes I suppose I do don't I? Very well we shall unify but I will do the talking. Don't look so glum Weiss if I didn't as you say 'escalate' problems then we would both be out of shape."

"Please master try to be polite." begged Weiss as he unified with his master.

"I shall be as polite to him as he is to me." was the shaman's reply.

Pailong advanced warily through the house, his senses tuned to detect anything out of the ordinary. After inspecting the kitchen and the main living area he heard a door open to his right and saw a figure outlined in the doorway of Horo's room. He could see their body's form but, along with it were what looked like a pair of eyes glowing in a strange color of black with white outlining. Pailong was having a very bad feeling.

"Who are you, identify yourself." ordered the manservant.

The figure just stared at him for a moment before asking in a foreign accent, 'Are you the owner of this place?"

"No but I-"

"Then why are you barking orders as if you do?" said the intruder cutting Pailong off in mid sentence.

"I want you to leave the premises right now." said Pailong ignoring the intruders comment.

"You have no right to ask me to leave." replied the intruder arrogantly.

"If you will not leave peacefully then I shall be forced to evacuate you from the premises." said Pailong cracking his knuckles threateningly.

"Don't bother you won't even be able to touch me in any harmful manner."

"You leave me no choice." said the manservant darkly, and he jumped forward sending a thundering left hook that connected with the intruders jaw. Or so it seemed. The intruder was no longer there. It looked as if the figure disappeared the instant his fist made contact. Pailong suddenly felt something cannon into his left side and was sent reeling across the floor. Momentarily dazed he looked up to see the intruder standing above him with his arms out, his hands except for his fingers were covered in what Pilong could only assume was Furyoku. It was taking form as what looked to be an eye on each hand, the Furyoku was so focused that you couldn't even see his hands just an eye on the back of each hand with a strange circle moving around them.

"I told you, you wouldn't be able to hurt me. It's called The Schwartz Donner. A special spirit unity technique from my family that's more than enough for you." he said.

Clearing his head Pailong jumped to his feet and started a 10 hit combo attack that should have rendered all but the toughest humans unconscious, but the intruder was moving in unbelievably swift motions and managed to evade or block each attack, coming to the end of his combo Pailong aimed a roundhouse kick at the intruders head. Instead of dodging the attack the intruder stepped forward to meet it and leaned over as the kick went over him. The figure rotated its body so that it was facing the wall. The figure then stamped their foot onto the wall and pushed themselves off, rotating in mid-air to use their left fist to hit the side of Pailong's head with great force, sending him backwards to the ground.

Pailong slowly got up on his feet and from the lights in the hallway was able to see the intruder clearly for the first time and was shocked to see it was a boy that looked only slightly older than mistress Jun's brother Ren.

'This can't be happening I'm Lee Pailong, one of the greatest martial artists in the world, and yet this punk is treating each of my attacks as though they're nothing. I haven't been this outclassed since Yoh Asakura united himself with the spirit of my old sensei.

"Pailong be careful he's a shaman." cried Jun in alarm.

The boy suddenly stopped and looked at Jun who gasped and retreated to the kitchen, the boy went to follow her but was cut off by Pailong.

"Stay away from her!" he said adopting his fighting pose and getting ready for the next attack, but it didn't come...

"You're not human." said the boy also seeing Pailong clearly for the first time; there was no surprise in his voice, it was just a statement, as though the thought that Pailong was a walking corpse was completely normal to him. Although now that Pailong thought about it he hadn't seen the boy express any kind of emotion since he had first encountered him.

"Well that makes things easier." said the boy matter-of-factly.

"What do you mean?" replied Pailong his voice apprehensive.

"Oh nothing, I just won't have to worry about killing you now since your not even alive in the first place, alright Weiss lets finish this up I need to get something to eat.'

Pailong saw in a split second what the shaman was about to do and barely had time to defend himself; as it was the force of the attack sent him crashing through the front door and out into the rain where he quickly lost consciousness.

"Now that's done lets get some food." the boy said to himself as he disengaged from spirit unity and headed in the direction of the kitchen.

"Master." said Weiss quickly.

"What is it Weiss?"

"I just thought you would be interested to know that the Chinese girl that ran in there a few moments ago is waiting around the corner with a knife." replied Weiss gesturing towards the kitchen.

"Well we'll have to do something about that won't we? I'll need your help for this Weiss."

"Of course master." replied Weiss bowing his head.

"Good then get into the ring." Weiss obliged and the boy walked up to the kitchen doorway and stopped just short of the entrance and started talking.

Schwartz Donner-Black Lightning


	3. Chapter 3

Jun was terrified, her guardian was being beaten to a pulp by a kid that looked as if he was a few apples short of a tree; his hair was dirty and tangled and reached all the way down to the top of his chest and he obviously been out on the street for a while; his jeans were muddy and his black polo shirt was ripped in several places.

If Pailong couldn't stop him then there was no way that she would be able to do anything, but that didn't mean she wasn't going to try. She ran into the kitchen and pulled out the longest knife she could find and waited at the entrance to the kitchen.

She heard the fight go on in the hall and felt the house shake when the young shaman summoned his guardian spirit to deliver the final blow to Lee Pailong. The fact that he had defeated Pailong so easily by only using spirit unity told Jun that the shaman was strong but she could still catch him unawares if she was fast enough.

Jun saw his shadow approach the kitchen and was just getting ready to attack when he stopped and said.

"I'm not going to hurt you."

"Why should I believe you?" hissed Jun.

"You shouldn't really," said the boy "After all I did just take out your guardian, although I don't think I damaged him that much. You should have him up and about again in no time."

"Why did you attack him?" asked Jun.

"I didn't he attacked me." replied the boy casually.

"liar," Hissed Jun "Why would he do that."

"Huh." the boy sighed and Jun thought she detected some disappointment.

"I see we're not going to get anywhere like this," remarked the boy "I don't suppose there is anyway I could get you to give me the knife?"

"No, if you want it that badly you'll have to come and get yourself."

"If you insist." was the cold reply.

Jun tensed and suddenly two arms wrapped round her from behind and lifted her off the ground, she tried to struggle but couldn't seem to break free.

"Drop the knife." said the boy again.

'What the, how did he get behind me? There's no way he could have gotten past without me seeing him!' thought Jun frantically as she struggled to get free while at the same time replying.

"No."

"Huh." the boy sighed again and Jun gasped as she felt the boys arms tighten around her, she struggled harder but soon stopped so that she could concentrate on breathing; the boy was crushing the life out of her!

"Just drop the knife what have you got to lose?" whispered the boy in her ear, his voice was no longer cold, in fact it seemed worried.

He's right thought Jun and she obediently dropped the knife.

Instantly the arms released her and she fell to floor gasping for breath.

"There now that wasn't so hard was it?" asked the boy picking up the knife and throwing it up in the air where it got stuck in the ceiling out of Jun's reach. He stopped talking when he realized that Jun was still on floor and was hardly moving.

"Are you all right?"asked the young shaman his voice full of concern.

There was no reply, the boy slowly walked up to her inert figure and flipped her onto her back to check that she was all right┘

"Master look out!" cried Weiss.

The shaman blinked in surprise as he saw a knife a few inches from his throat, but this wasn't what surprised him, what surprised him was the fact was that his own hand had moved to block the knife thrust seemingly of its own accord.

"Good job Weiss." the young shaman breathed, before tuning his attention to the green haired girl who was struggling to free her wrist from his grasp.

"Calm down I am not going to hurt you." he said, the girl ignored him and continued to struggle.

"Huh." the boy sighed again, he grabbed the girls other wrist with his free hand and sat on top of her pinning her to the floor.

"Relax, I've already told you I'm not going to hurt you so drop the knife."

The girl just glared at him and continued to struggle. 'Looks like I'm going to have to do this the hard way.' thought the boy.

"Look at me" the boy said in a calm and reassuring tone. The girl immediately turned her head left and right to avoid eye contact.

A look of annoyance crossed the boy's features and he placed the girls arms across her chest and wrestled both her arms under his left hand so that his right hand was now free. The boy mentally noted that this may not have been a wise choice as the girl had a rather large chest making it harder to pin her arms to a solid area were her arms wouldn't shift into a different direction than he needed her arms to go. He placed his right hand under her chin and forced her to turn and look at him.

The boys voice suddenly changed; it became deeper, more powerful and as he spoke Jun felt that she couldn't disobey.

"Look into my eyes." the boy ordered, Jun did so and noticed that his eyes were a startling ice blue, as she continued to stare she noticed the colors of the iris seemed to swirl and dance and then she realized she couldn't look away.

"I'm not going to hurt you, you're perfectly safe, so relax." the boy told her his voice softening as he spoke. He felt her muscles loosen beneath him and she stopped struggling.

"Very good," the boy said as though speaking to child "now what's your name?" he asked the girl. She gazed at him silently for a moment before replying.

"Jun."

"That's a beautiful name; now Jun do you believe me when I say I'm not going to hurt you?" The girl bobbed her head slightly as an indication that she did.

"Then could you please let go of the knife?" it was a request not an order and Jun complied. "Very good." the boy said again "Now Jun I'm going to let you get up and when you do you will be calm and perfectly relaxed, you will not be frightened or nervous understand?"

The girl nodded her head vaguely and the boy sighed and seemed to relax when...

"GET OFF MY SISTER!"


	4. Chapter 4

Ren couldn't believe what he was seeing; first there Lee Pailong lying unconscious on top of the front door which seemed to have blown off its hinges by some kind of explosion and then he walks into the kitchen and sees some guy sitting on top of his sister pinning her to the floor and looking as though he was about to rape her. Ren responded in the only way he knew how; with anger.

He ran at the figure sitting on top of his sister and hit him in the head with the blunt side of his Kwan-do with such force that the figure broke through two walls before finally coming to a stop outside.

Ren glanced quickly at his sister and noticed that she looked dazed, but other than that seemed all right and headed outside after his opponent.

"Master are you alright?" asked Weiss.

"Uhhh...I think so, why didn't you warn me that there were others coming?"

"My apologies master I let my guard down."

"Yeah well don't make a habit of it." said the boy rising unsteadily to his feet, he took a deep breath while observing his surroundings and saw that he was standing in front of a group kids who seemed to be slightly younger than he was, he then noticed that several of them appeared to have a ghost hovering nearby. 'So they're shaman' the boy thought to himself, 'this could complicate matters.'

"Um excuse but who are you and why did you just come flying through that wall?' one of the kids asked. He had brown hair, which didn't quite reach down to his shoulders and was wearing a pair of orange headphones around his neck.

Before the newcomer could answer Ren stepped through the newly made doorway with a scowl on his face saying,

"He's a piece of scum Asakura and the reason he came flying through the wall is because I found him trying to force himself on my sister."

The other shaman instantly oversouled with their spirits and were getting ready to attack.

"Dude that is so not cool." said a kid with spiky blue hair.

"Yeah I think Tokageroh and I should teach you some manners." said a guy with the biggest quaff the newcomer had ever seen.

'This doesn't look good,' thought the boy as he calculated his odds of beating six armed shaman without any kind of weapon. "Any ideas Weiss?"

"Try and talk your way out there's no way you can't fight them without your weapon." said the spirit while trying to keep his eyes on all the shaman at once. "If that Fails, try and get one of the shaman into a one on one fight and try and steal their weapon or retrieve your own."

"Okay we'll try the diplomatic approach first." answered the shaman.

He got up and raised his hands saying:

"Look this all just a big misunderstanding if you give me a chance to explain-"

But Ren would have none it. "Misunderstanding my foot I know what I saw and I'm going to make you pay for it." the other kids started closing in on the newcomer who stood his ground while staring at Ren.

"I don't want to fight you." he told Ren.

"Too bad, you haven't got a choice." said Ren advancing on the newcomer.

'Oh well time for plan B,' he thought "What? Are all six of you going to gang up on me? " he said to them, they slowed down but didn't stop.

"What's the matter is an unarmed opponent to much for you to handle?" he said directing his question at Ren with a sneer on his face.

"You guys stay out of this, he's mine!" cried Ren taking the bait and jumping forward with his Kwan-do, aiming a vertical slash at the newcomer's chest but missed as his opponent dived to his right and rolled onto his feet to face the next attack.

Ren scowled and yelled "Bason! Into the Kwan-do, Golden Chuuka-Zanmai!!"

Ren shot forward his arms a blur as he struck out at his opponent with inhuman speed, tearing his shirt and cutting his arms and legs. Ren finished the attack by swinging his Kwan-do two-handedly with earth shattering force which sent his opponent flying through the air until he crashed into a tree. Amazing the newcomer regained his feet and started taunting Ren.

"Come on is that the best you got, I've had worse scratches from kittens."

Ren blinded by rage lunged for his opponents stomach as though trying to spear him but the newcomer simply side stepped and Ren▓s momentum caused his Kwan-do to get stuck in the tree that his opponent had been knocked into.

While Ren wrestled with his Kwan-do, the newcomer turned and ran back towards the house but was cut off by the other Shaman.

"Where do you think you're going?" the blue haired kid asked.

"Inside." muttered the lone shaman; he didn't stop running but just before he ran into the other shaman he seemed to freeze in place then disappear.

"Huh? Where'd he go?" Horo asked the others.

"I don't know, he was right in front of us a second ago!" said Rio confused.

"Oh, he's behind us." said Yoh calmly. The whole gang turned round and sure enough the newcomer was behind them and had run into the house.

"Hey Yoh if you knew where he was why did you let get him past us?" asked Manta surprised by Yoh's actions.

"Well I thought he had a right to defend himself." said Yoh in his usual care free manner.

"What! Yoh are you thinking straight?" yelled Horo.

"He didn't seem like a bad person to me," replied Yoh, "he didn't want to fight us and Ren didn't give a chance to explain what he was doing, I just don't see why we should attack him when we don't know the whole story."

"Yoh did you hear what he was he doing to Jun." said Manta looking at Yoh as if he was a few sandwiches short of a picnic.

"He didn't do anything to me." Jun had finally managed to get up and make her way over to the others. She seemed unnaturally calm and looked as though she wasn't completely aware of what was happening around her.

"Jun are you alright?!" Tamao squeaked.

"Yes I feel fine." answered Jun her voice still showing no sign of emotion. She turned and started making her way over to the unconscious Lee Pailong.

"See I told you!" said Yoh triumphantly "And I bet if we listened to his side of story everything will make perfect sense." Yoh beamed at the rest of the gang.

"Yoh how can be so sure that everything will turn out all right?" said Manta looking at his friend in a puzzled way.

"I just have a hunch." he told them.

"Well if you wish to listen to the strangers side of the story I suggest that we stop young Ren right now while he is preoccupied." Rio said to the group "Otherwise he may not be around to tell us."

Suddenly a shadow passed overhead and they all looked up to see the newcomer somersaulting over their heads and land in front of them with his back to the group and his eyes focused on Ren.

"Somehow Rio I don't think we're going to have to worry about that." said Yoh.

The newcomer was now dressed in a dark grey rain coat that covered most of his figure but a sheathed four-foot sword could be seen at his side with one hand resting on the end of the handle. From the shape of the sheath the sword appeared to be a strait blade iron sword. On the hilt at the base of the blade, and in-between the pommel bars was a circular gem.

Ren finally managed to free his Kwan-do from the tree and turned to face his opponent who was now armed. Ren sneered at the sheathed sword at his opponent's side and said ⌠Are you planning to use that or is it just for show?"

"You'll see." replied his opponent and he grasped the sword handle tightly and pulled it out of its scabbard.

Ren was trying hard not to laugh when he saw that all his opponent was holding was what looked to be an iron sword, but its blade looked to be made of blackened rust. "How are you going to fight with that? That hunk of junk looks to be about 100 years old and fall apart any minute." he asked his voice full of contempt.

In response his opponent shouted "Never underestimate your opponent, or you"ll look like an idiot. This sword isn't junk, it's a modified ZweihДnder." The stranger then held out the sword at a diagonal angle with his left hand resting the blade and his right gripping the handle.

"Weiss! Spirit Form! Into Eroberung." As he said this, he maneuvered the blade so that his left hand was on the base of the blade closest to the tip were the handle ended and the blade began, on the hilt the jewel glowed red. All of the shamans could then see a large crow-like beast fly up from behind the boy, spread it's large wings, then seem as though being sucked into the jewel. The jewel on the hilt of the sword flashed, a great otherworldly cawing was heard, and a black, white outlined light began to appear out of the jewel, swirling and spiraling around the blade as the newcomer traced with his hand the length of the sword's blade. The flowing miniature twister of light went all the way to the end. When the light dissipated, the blade was now a shining silver of steel. The hilt now had a crow head with multiple flowing spines coming out from the back of the head reaching all the way up to the boys head, the jewel lighting up the bird's eyes.

"Pflug Positur." Said the newcomer as he held the sword at his side and with his other hand gestured for Ren to attack.

"Arrogant fool!" snarled Ren "I'll teach you not to underestimate me, Golden Chuuka-Zanmai!" Ren Immediately launched forward attempting to skewer his opponent in a dozen places.

His opponent didn't move, just before Ren's first lunge reached him he brought his sword arm up and moved it in a blurring pattern that blocked each of Ren's attacks.

But just before they made contact, the boy said "Absetzen."

Ren jumped back, surprised that his attack had been dismissed so easily then he was completely shocked when he looked down to see his shirt in complete shreds. "How? When did-."

"Absetzen is an a defensive technique were one deflects a thrust or cut at the same time as stabbing or cutting. Be happy I didn't decide to use the stabbing technique." The stranger explained.

Ren's surprise was quickly replaced by anger and he charged his opponent again, holding his Kwan-do as if he were going to attempt a horizontal slash but changed at the last minute into another lunge. His opponent swiftly raised his sword and parried the attack, causing Ren to loose balance and stumble face first into his opponents elbow which sent sprawling across the ground.

"Just did it again. You need to calm down." the stranger told him "How do you expect to focus on your attacks when you allow your emotions to run rampant inside you?"

"You dare lecture me on how I should fight?" yelled Ren angrily he ran forwards and aimed an attack at the strangers head, but his opponent raised his sword to block the attack and locked their weapons so that they were face to face.

(Ren saw his opponent clearly for the first time. He looked to be only slightly older than himself; he had jet-black hair, which at the moment was covering the top half of his face and Ren could only just make out that he had bright blue eyes. He also notice from his features he appeared to be European. Ren guessed that was why he was using German words.)

"Well you obviously need the lesson." Replied his opponent. As they struggled against each other to try and gain an upper hand Ren's opponent suddenly lashed out with a kick that connected with Ren's midriff and forced back by about 10 feet.

⌠Teufel Abend!" the stranger yelled slashing at the air with his sword; which emitted multiple black-colored objects looking like feathers that streaked towards Ren in multiple directions, he was unable to evade all of them in time and got hit with the full force of the attack and was sent flying into a tree. He slid to the ground and lay there for a few seconds before he got up slowly, shaking his head while at the same time saying "Please tell me that's not the best you've- huh? Where'd you go?" he looked around frantically for his opponent and shouted, "I order you to show yourself!"

It was at that moment that the wind picked up and Ren was suddenly grabbed from behind, he tried to struggle but stopped when he felt a cold blade press against his throat┘

For the spines on Weiss's head and in over soul, imagine Blackheart from Marvel comics head spines.

Teufel Abend- German for 'Devil's evening'

Pflug Positur-Plough Stance

Absetzen-Set/setting aside


	5. Chapter 5

"Disengage your Over Soul and drop your weapon, in that order." whispered the stranger in Ren's ear, while restraining him with one hand and holding his blade to Ren's throat with the other.

"No."

"Do you have a death wish or something?" muttered the stranger.

"I won't admit defeat to the likes of you." Ren hissed gripping his Kwan-do firmly.

"You're willing to face death because of your pride?" The stranger said to Ren in disgust, "Do you really have so little to live for that you would rather die that admit defeat to someone better than you?"

"You're not better than-" Ren started to say angrily but was cut off when the stranger applied more pressure to Ren's throat.

"Maybe you haven't noticed but I'm the one with a blade at your throat not the other way around, I think that qualifies me as being better than you." the stranger told a furious Ren, "Now I'm being generous because I don't think your sister would appreciate seeing you die here unable to defend yourself. So give up, you can always challenge me to a rematch later."

Ren was silent for a moment and the stranger could tell he was thinking it over, when he didn't reply the stranger added, "If you disengage your Over Soul right now I'll release you and we'll call it draw."

At this remark Ren's anger came storming back as he cried, "I don't need your pity! I'll take care of you right here and now, Bason Attack!" Ren shoved his Kwan-do behind him as strongly as he could and the Stranger, caught by surprise was sent flying through the air before flipping up and landing on his feet.

The stranger didn't look angry he just seemed and annoyed and he remarked to Ren. "I've come to the conclusion that your family is extremely stubborn, you won't ever admit that your wrong until someone shows you proof, so it looks as though I'm going to have to prove to you that I'm better than you." He raised his sword and shouted "Weiss, Schwartz Ritter Schwert!"

The crow's eyes on the sword hilt flashed once as the boy stuck the blade into the sheath and pulled back the sword. The blade became separate and stuck in the sheath as just the hilt and handle were left with the crow's head. From the crow's mouth then came a red light that extended and took the form of a translucent blade.

The SK gang watched in fascination as the fight between the two shaman progressed and when the stranger had Ren by the throat, Horo and Rio rushed forward to help but were stopped by Anna who banged their heads together anime style and reminded them that Ren wanted to fight alone, Anna then continued to bash their heads together until they stopped arguing with her.

The two shaman faced each other for some time without moving, then as if responding to some unseen signal began to charge towards to each other, weapons raised for one final attack.

Ren ran as fast as he could towards his opponent, anger coursing through his veins and as he came level swung his Kwan-do in a diagonal slash so that his opponent couldn't side step it but his opponent met the attack head on and amazingly parried it with his sword using only one hand, then with a shock of horror Ren saw his opponents blade lancing towards his throat.

"Stechen!" Was shouted from the stranger's mouth.

The last thing Ren saw before the blow was flash of red light, then he crumpled to the ground unconscious.

The stranger exhaled and red blade of his sword disappeared he sheathed the hilt and turned to see Ren lying on the ground.

"REN!" screamed everyone in the SK gang as they rushed towards their fallen comrade they gathered round him and let out a collective sigh of relief when they saw him start to move.

"Uh, what happened?" he said groggily to the others but it was the stranger who replied.

"You lost so deal with it." The gang turned round again and focused on the newcomer with dark expressions.

Sensing that the group was about to attack the stranger drew his weapon and started to form spirit control┘

"Stop This At Once!" a figure leapt out of a tree to stand between the gang and the stranger.

"Hey Silva what are you doing here?" Yoh asked "I thought the preliminary matches were over."

"They finished yesterday, but it is still my duty to watch over the shaman that are participating in the tournament, and I am afraid I cannot allow you to fight any longer."

"You have no right to stop us," Len told the shaman council representative, as he got back on his feet "this isn't an official tournament battle."

"No it isn't, but I still have the power to disqualify the loser of any fight from the tournament," Silva told Ren eyeing him darkly "and as you have already been beaten once I suggest you step down, besides you have no reason to fight."

"What do you mean no reason?" Ren yelled angrily ⌠He was forcing himself on my sister! I think that-"

"No he wasn't." Silva said quietly, cutting Ren off, "You came in on them in the middle of a fight with no idea of how they got there, you didn't ask what had happened, you just assumed you knew what happened, and you were wrong."

Ren looked as though he was about to explode and gripped his Kwan-do tightly as if he was planning to attack Silva but Yoh got between them and tried to calm Ren down.

"Come on Ren, there's no reason to get angry why don't we just hear the guy out, at least that way we'll know what happened." Yoh said trying to persuade his friend.

Ren was silent for a moment before he said "How do we now if he'll tell the truth?"

"Just what are you implying?" the stranger calmly began, but Anna interrupted him and told Ren,

"We'll know because I can tell when people are lying." Anna said. The others stared at her for a minute and she began to look annoyed.

"It's part of the basic training to become an Ikato, you have to be able to tell when people or spirits are trying to deceive you." she said eyeing them coldly and they all looked away.

"Fine then we'll listen to what he has to say but if don't like what he says I'll wipe the floor with him."

The stranger, upon hearing Ren's last statement, chuckled to himself darkly. Ren heard him and wheeled round to face him saying, "What's so funny?"

"You are." the stranger said to Ren "After the little skirmish we just had I find it quite amusing that you think you'll be able to 'wipe the floor with me.'"

Ren attempted to attack the stranger again but was restrained by his friends and they dragged him back inside. One kid stayed behind though; he was wearing a white T-shirt and had a pair of orange headphones hanging on his neck.

He looked at Silva and asked, "Are you planning on sticking around? We've got plenty of room."

"No thank you," replied Silva "I have important business elsewhere." the representative then walked off down the street and was quickly swallowed up by the darkness.

Yoh shrugged, walked up to the stranger and offered his hand saying,

"Hi there, my names Yoh Asakura and this is my guardian spirit Amidamaru, sorry about my friend Ren he can get a little carried away sometimes."

The stranger took Yoh's hand and replied,

"My name is Xephon Krisall, and this is my guardian spirit Weiss." gesturing to Weiss, who had appeared above his master and was looking very thoughtful about something and looked to be about to say something, however before he could say anything Anna's cold voice carried out to them,

"Yoh get your ass in here your letting in a draft."

Unbeknownst to Yoh or Xephon someone else was watching the fight besides Silva, in the darkness not much could be seen of the figure who had watched the battle between Xephon and Ren. The figure appeared to be same height as Yoh but his features could not be seen due to the lack of light.

Suddenly a smaller figure approached the first from behind and as it did so passed through a pool of light form one of the street lamps. He appeared to be African child.

"Why is Master watching weak shaman fight?"

"Because they interest me Opacho, especially this newcomer, he is unexpectedly strong. He may be able to teach my brother a thing or two about power. Unfortunately I cannot allow that to happen just yet, so it seems I must remove him from the group."

"What does master have planned?"

"At the moment nothing, his arrival is a complete surprise so I have not been able to prepare anything, however I have a feeling he may be useful to me. So for the moment I shall watch."

Schwartz Ritter Schwert-German for 'Black knight's Sword'

Stechen-German for Stab/stabbing


	6. Chapter 6

Xephon couldn't believe the way things had turned out. He had been certain he would have to fight each of the shaman and that he would be forced to find a new shelter. However things had not gone as he had expected, and he didn't mind at all.

When Xephon had re-entered the house he saw all the kids sitting in a circle around a girl with blond hair, she was wearing a black dress and had red beads hanging around her neck. She looked up at him when he entered and told him to sit in front of her and Xephon complied.

"Now I want you tell us what happened, don't leave anything out and dont bother lying because I'll know if you do." she told Xephon glaring at him.

Xephon didn't look away but continued to stare straight back at Anna before replying.

"Who are you? And what gives you the right to order me around?"

Xephon then noticed that the room was completely silent; before the other Shaman had been talking quietly to each other, not loudly but loud enough to be heard. Now there was complete silence. Xephon looked around and noticed that they were all cowering behind a couch.

"I'm Anna the Ikato and this is my house so I can do whatever I like!"

Xephon saw something move to his left, he instinctively raised his hand and blocked the girl's attempt to slap him in the face. He looked at her and whispered.

"Nice try, but my sister likes to play the little dictator as well and she's twice your age so anything you do I've seen before. So lets get to whatever point we need to get to."

There was gasp and Xephon turned to see the gang all looking at him with their mouths open.

"No way! He just stopped Anna's infamous left hand slap." said Manta in utter disbelief.

"Whoa! I didn't think that was possible." Yoh said in awe.

"Ahem." It was Anna; she glared at the gang before saying,

"Lets get on with this shall we? I would like to know what happened sometime tonight."

The gang murmured their agreement and sat in a circle around Anna and Xephon.

Anna sat with her legs crossed and stared into Xephon's eyes and said "Well? Start talking."

Xephon bit back an insult he had been about to use and took a deep breath and started talking.

"As I had said my name's Xephon Krisall, I'm a shaman and I hail from Germany, this is my guardian spirit Weiss. We were walking in the rain when we saw this building..."

Xephon told them about how he had come to seek shelter and had fallen asleep. Then how Lee Pailong had attacked him before he had explained why he was there and then about how Jun had run into kitchen to grab a knife and had tried to stab him.

"Speaking of Jun," said Pilika in a confused tone, "Is it just me or has she been acting odd?"

"What do you mean odd?" said Ren darkly.

"Well it's just that she's normally always fussing over you, and now after your fight with Xephon she hasn't said a thing."

"That would be my fault." Xephon said as he raised his hand.

"Why what did you do to her you-" Ren started angrily.

"Calm down I just hypnotized her so that she'd stop trying to kill me, but if you want her back to normal then fine." Xephon finished the sentence by snapping his fingers and Jun fell down asleep.

"Jun-" Ren started to say but was cut off as Xephon snapped his fingers again. Jun yawned and got up slowly and looked around.

"Why was I sleeping on the floor?" Jun started but when she saw Ren her eyes widened as she took in the bruises and cuts that covered his body.

"Ren are you all right? What happened? You look awful!" Jun continued to fuss over Ren who started to turn red with embarrassment when Xephon snapped his fingers again and she fell down asleep.

"I can keep like that if you want, it'll be a lot quieter." Xephon told Ren.

"Yeah, thanks." said Ren still slightly red from his sisters concern "Pailong could you take Jun to her room."

"Of course master Ren." Pailong picked up Jun's sleeping form and carried her off to her room. Ren then turned to look at Xephon.

"How long before she wakes up?" he asked.

"Oh she'll wake up some time in the morning." Xephon answered.

"Um excuse me." Xephon turned and saw that he was being addressed by what appeared to be a talking doll.

"Who are you?" Xephon asked the little kid.

"Oh my names Manta, anyway can I ask you a question?"

"You just did." Xephon saw that the kid looked slightly uneasy at his answer as though unsure whether he could ask another question.

"What's your question?"

"Um well at the end of your fight with Ren I was sure that you killed him because I saw your sword go through his neck-"

"No it didn't."

"Yeah it did I saw it." Manta argued.

"All right then." Xephon pulled out only the hilt of the sword from its sheath and showed it to Manta who backed away, afraid he was being attacked.

"Relax I'm not going to attack you, I just want you to explain how a sword with no blade could cut through someone's neck."

"But it had a blade, you made one for it and I saw it go through Ren's neck." Manta persisted.

"Are you suggesting that I made a blade out thin air?" talking to Manta as if he crazy.

"Well yes, I saw you make it when you started fighting." Manta replied.

Xephon grinned slightly but his eyes were still emotionless and said "Well your sharp I'll give you that. But I didn't create a blade; it was already there, I simply gave it enough power to become real in the physical world."

"What do you mean?" asked Manta confused.

Xephon sighed and held out the hilt showing it to Manta and saying "It would take too long to explain properly so I'll give you a simplified version."

"This weapon is called The Eroberung and was made for my family by a Shaman weapon smith, because it was made by a shaman it has certain properties that normal weapons do not. One thing you will have already guessed is that it allows me to create a blade from the hilt by giving it some of my Furyoku. My Schwartz Ritter Schwert for example cannot pierce human skin, nor can it kill; it has no edge but it can still cause a great deal damage. The Spirit Blade which I used to defeat your friend also cannot pierce human skin."

"But I saw you-" Manta began.

"Let me finish. Although the Spirit Blade cannot harm the flesh it can damage the spirit, which is what it did to your friend Ren. The blade passed through his flesh and attacked his spirit. This caused Ren to loosed consciousness, because his spirit needed some time to recover from the attack. There are other blades that I can summon but I won't bore you with the details right now."

"That was the short version?" Manta asked Xephon his mind still buzzing from he had been told.

"The full version takes two days to explain how the sword itself is composed." Xephon said calmly.

"So you can jump strait through a body and attack the spirit itself. Impressive." Anna said.

"Hey dude I got another question for you." Horo said in his usual hyped up voice "When you were like running right at us after Ren's thing got stuck in the tree you just disappeared. How'd you do that?"

"Yes I think we'd all like to hear the answer to that." said Ren with just a touch of bitterness.

"First of all I didn't disappear I just moved faster." replied Xephon in a dull voice as though he was bored.

"What do you mean 'just moved faster?'" said Yoh puzzled.

"I simply moved at a very fast pace." replied Xephon.

"How? No human can move that fast, not even shamans." said Ren sharply.

"Through Weiss I can; he is one of my families guardian spirits in which have been with us sense my family began practicing our form of Shamanism. Using my Furyoku, I can have Weiss make edges all over my body and cut space."

"Cut space?" Ren said skeptically.

"Yes." Xephon said. He then held out his hand. "Right here, the area above my hand. There is something there. Air, oxygen, microscopic organisms, all areas of this planet is occupied by something. By using my Furyoku in a specified way, I can cut through that space and move with no limitations against me. This grants me speed. The technique is called ErscheinungskЭrzung."

"Wow that must be really cool," said Manta excitedly, "you could go practically anywhere just by simply running like that!"

"Unfortunately it's not that easy, I can only do it for short periods of time and doing it repeatedly drains me, the most I've ever done was a minute."

"Hey could you teach me how to do that?" Yoh asked with a goofy grin on his face.

"No." replied Xephon, Yoh face fell, "But I could teach you how to put an aura on your sword to make its attacks more powerful." This caused Yoh's grin to come rushing back.

"Awesome when can we start?" Yoh asked with enthusiasm.

Before Xephon could reply Anna cut in saying.

"Xephon, you said that when you came here the door was unlocked, didn't you?"

Xephon heard someone gulp and then try to move away very quietly. He continued to look at Anna, shrugged his shoulders and said "Yeah so?"

"Yoh..." said Anna slowly, looking to where Yoh had been when he was talking to Xephon, but he had mysteriously disappeared. Anna got up and went to look for him and Manta started to ask Xephon more questions, which were making his brain hurt, when suddenly,

"Yoh where do you think your going?" Anna steely voice drifted in from the hall.

⌠Uh well..." Yoh started to say in a nervous voice.

"You forgot to lock the door didn't you." it was a statement not a question.

"I think I'll get started on those laps I owe you." Yoh said running for the door.

"Yoh Asakura get back here!"

Xephon heard both of them run outside and said to Manta casually.

"Delightful girl I can see why Yoh wants to live with her." his voice was heavy with sarcasm.

"They're engaged." said Manta quietly.

"Arranged marriage?" Xephon asked.

"No." replied Manta, "Anna saved Yoh's life once and asked him to marry her when he became Shaman King."

"Poor kid if the tournament doesn't kill him his fiance will."

ErscheinungskЭrzung-Appearance shortening


	7. Chapter 7

"Those are my pancakes!"

"I don't see your name on them."

"It's right here!"

SMACK

"Ow!"

Ren and Horo's argument drifted outside to where Xephon had been meditating since he woke up.

"Master perhaps it's time for you to get something to eat, I don't believe there will be any peace now that the others are awake." Weiss told his master quietly.

Xephon sighed and got up "Unfortunately I think your right, I wonder if there's anything left?"

Xephon opened the door and was greeted with one of the most bizarre sights he had ever seen.

Rio was in the kitchen wearing a frilly pink apron and was flipping pancakes. Horo and Ren were fighting each other and trying to stuff pancakes down the others throat. Jun and Pirika were arguing about something and were both having to yell in order to get heard. Anna was trying to make Yoh do his training inside oblivious of what was going on around them and Manta was running around the room with one of his oversized books on top of his head as a helmet. The spirits were trying to calm things down but just seemed to be making things worse.

Xephon watched this for a few minutes before he saw Tamao sitting at the end of the table eating quietly. As she was the only who appeared to be sane he made his way over to her and sat down beside her.

"Is it always like this?" Xephon asked still watching what was happening in front of him.

"No today's pretty quiet." Tamao told him.

Xephon looked at her, certain she was making a joke, when he realized she was being serious he said to her in amazement.

"They do this everyday and they're still alive?"

"Yep, they're good friends really so they won't kill each other, otherwise it would have happened by now." Tamao told him simply.

Xephon sighed and then picked up his fork and speared five Pancakes that that were flying through the air towards Ren's head, Xephon put the pancakes on his plate and began to eat, rising his fork a few times to spear more pancakes out of the air.

When he was finished he left the kitchen and went to explore the house to see if there was anything he could do until things quieted down. He entered the main living room and noticed that there was laptop lying on the floor.

'It must belong to Manta.' Xephon thought. 'I'm sure he won't mind if I take a look.' Xephon sat down, picked up the laptop and turned it on. Most of what was on there was a completely boring; school reports and revision notes for pop quizzes, but Xephon saw a file marked 'Shaman' and decided to open it.

It seemed as though Manta had compiled a database on everything there was to know on shaman, he spent a few minutes looking through it before Ren and Horo dragged their argument into the room. Xephon tried to ignore them but they were making too much noise, eventually Xephon gave up, switched off the laptop and put it back on the floor where he found it and tried to find some part of the house that wasn't occupied.

While Xephon was walking around he turned a corner and someone ran into him and fell down. Xephon looked down and saw it Pilika.

"You should watch where you're going." she told him.

"You're the one that ran into me." Xephon replied in a bored voice.

"No I didn't!"

"Then why are you the one on the floor?"

"Because..." Pilika thought for a moment and decided to change tack "Why where you wandering around here anyway?"

"I was looking for some peace and quiet."

Pilika laughed at him then saw he was serious, "Well you won't find any around here until Anna throws all the boys out to make them train, you'd be better off exploring the town for a little while."

"Thanks but I think I should do some training myself. Do you know anywhere that's usually deserted?"

"There's an old junk pile that normally empty this time day, it's on the edge of town so no one will mind if you make too much noise."

"Thank you, could you tell Yoh that I haven't forgotten about his lesson and that I'll see him around lunch."

"Sure." Pilika said shrugging and she walked off to find someone else to talk to.

Xephon collected his coat and weapon headed outside. It wasn't particularly cold but there clouds in the sky that were threatening to rain.

It took Xephon twenty minutes to reach the scrap heap that Pilika had told him about. Although scrap heap hardly described it, it looked as though there had been a massive battle fought out by cars and other metal appliances and no one had bothered to clean up afterwards, burnt out wrecks could be seen everywhere and there were huge towers of stacked cars that looked as if they really shouldn't be able to stand.

'Perfect.' thought Xephon, "All right Weiss lets get to work." Xephon Pulled out his weapon and waited for Weiss to enter it and formed his over soul, he ran his hand along the blade. Smiling to himself Xephon turned to face one of the perilous leaning towers of wreckage and jumped at it swinging his sword so fast that you could only see a dark haze. Landing a few feet away from the tower standing full on his feet he slowly stood and turned his head. As he did so the tower of wreckage that he had attacked crumpled into pieces and collapsed with a loud crash. Xephon's smile grew wider.

"Good, it looks like were finally getting this specific technique down." As he continued to train; he was slowly increasing the speed and power of his attacks until half of the junk heap had changed into metal confetti. Xephon decided to take a quick break and leaned against one of the remaining towers taking deep breaths to get his energy back, he was about to start training again when...

"Hah, I found you!"

Xephon looked up to see a girl about his age standing on a heap of burnt out cars.

"Weiss do we know her?" he whispered quietly to his spirit.

"I believe she was you last opponent in the preliminary matches master."

Xephon groaned inwardly. He remembered that fight all to well; it has been one of the most annoying in his life.

Flashback

Xephon had decided to get to the battle area early so that he could prepare ahead of time and concentrate on how to win the battle. It didn't really matter because he had won his other two easily, but Xephon never fought unless he gave it his all.

When he had arrived at the designated area, (a park with a fountain and a few trees) he sat down and began his wait while thinking to himself.

As he was sitting he saw another figure enter the park; it was a girl who appeared to be the same age him although she looked to be a head shorter, she had brown hair, which was fixed into a ponytail that reached down to her shoulders and was wearing black pants and a purple top, she also had a black bag slung over her shoulder. She saw Xephon and made her way over.

"Hi there!"

Xephon ignored her and continued to sit in silence.

"Watcha doing?" she asked him walking closer. She saw his blade sitting next to him, "Cool." she muttered "Is it real?"

As she said this she reached out to touch the sword, which promptly vanished from sight and into Xephon's hands.

"Hey what'd you do that for?" she asked disappointed.

"To stop you from hurting yourself, didn't your parents ever teach you not to touch things that don't belong to you?" Xephon said, annoyed that his concentration had been broken.

"No not really." she answered in a carefree tone of voice, she sat down next to him and began talking to him for no reason at all, asking him what his names was and why he was here.

"My names Xephon and I'm waiting for someone, it's suppose to be a private meeting." Xephon said trying to hint to her that she should leave.

"Who are you waiting for?" she asked still sitting down.

Xephon frowned; the girl was starting to annoy him, but he dug out his oracle bell and read off the name.

"Mia Sing, now could you please leave."

"Um no I don't think I can." the girl replied.

"Why not?" Xephon's voice now had an icy edge to it.

"Because your waiting for me." the girl answered simply.

"What?" Xephon said with deadly calm.

"I'm your opponent silly." Mia giggled as she said this, pulling out a memorial tablet and released her guardian spirit. It was women who appeared to be in her twenties and was wearing a striped leotard and had a carnival mask covering her face.

"Perfect a hyped up cheerleader." Xephon muttered under his breath.

The girl frowned and said "How did you know I was cheerleader?"

"Call it a hunch," Xephon looked at his watch and sighed, there were still an hour until their match was due to start.

That hour had been the most agonizing in Xephon's life. The girl had talked continuously, telling him about her life and family and how she had entered the tournament. When she asked him why he had entered the tournament he didn't bother replying, hoping that would take the hint and shut up. She stared at Xephon for a few seconds, and then answered the question herself, talking in an irritating sing-song voice.

By the end of the hour Xephon had heard all about her life; her parents, brothers, sisters and even the pet poodle she had.

Xephon was nearly ready to strangle the girl to stop her from talking when his oracle bell had started beeping, signaling the beginning of the match.

"Ooh it's time to start." Mia told him. As she said this she opened her black bag and pulled out some strange arched metal pieces of what looked to be part of something. Mia put on some gloves that had metal in the palm and finger tip areas, and then started to put the arches together. The result was a giant ring as big as her torso with the outside of the ring being bladed.

She integrated with her spirit and began swirling the ring on her arm and then jerked back her arm caught the ring and got into what Xephon assumed to be a fighting stance.

Xephon sighed and stood up pulling out his memorial tablet and releasing Weiss, who came out slowly and formed himself in front of Xephon with his back to Mia.

"Why did you not release me sooner master? Did I do something to offend you?"

"Not at all Weiss." Xephon muttered darkly, "I just thought I'd let you keep your sanity."

Xephon looked at his master quizzically for a moment but decided not to comment. He turned round and saw Mia for the first time.

"Is she our opponent?"

"Yes and I must say I'm looking forward to it." Xephon replied giving Weiss a dark grin.

"Why master? Is she powerful?" Weiss asked in excitement.

"I don't know," Xephon replied, "Its just that right now I really wanna kick her ass."

The shaman Council representative appeared and told them to begin.

Xephon instantly leapt forward and struck the girl with a spinning kick that knocked her off her feet she lay on the ground groaning for a few seconds.

"Hey no fair! I wasn't ready!" she told Xephon in a whining voice.

Xephon gritted his teeth and bit back the insult he had been about to use, now that he knew that she wasn't as strong as he was so he should take it easy on her.

The girl used Xephon's moment of indecision to attack and shouted,

"Razor Gail!"

She threw the ring at Xephon. It was heading straight for his head. Xephon waited till the last second and sidestepped so that the ring went spinning past him, but he wasn't fast enough and felt something hot on his cheek, he reached up to touch it and noticed that he was bleeding. Xephon considered he may have been wrong about her, that attack was headed for his head so he could guess that there might be some piece of a fighter in her.

But the thing that was going to be a major problem was the ring itself, that hot cut wasn'y made by the rings edge, it was made by the velocity and speed the ring was rotating at. The mere air itself was turning into an intangible razor. Xephon guessed that the spirit was doing that. If Mia was able to learn to throw and rotate the ring just by herself then have her spirit increase the speed further, Xephon was thanking the world for stupidity. Usually he didn't do that often.

"Master be careful don't let the ring get too close to you." Weiss shouted in alarm.

"Why thank you Weiss I never would have considered that, what ever would I do without you?" Xephon told his spirit sarcastically.

Xephon then heard something spinning to his left and threw himself to his right as the razor ring sped past him and another ripped through his coat.

"Hey your good, most people don't realize that they come back." the girl said in her cheery voice.

Xaphon uttered a curse and made his move.

Xephon charged at her but she jumped back before he could get within range and threw her ring again. Xephon kept running and deflected the ring with his sword knocking it to ground and tried attacking the girl again.

She retreated once more; performing a series of back flips that eventually landed her in a tree where she stopped to catch her breath. She then held out her hands and said,

"Watch out for the back wind."

Xephon looked behind him to see the ring pop out of the ground and level itself horizontally then move at him. Xephon jumped up and over the ring and he could hear the whistling of the wind made from the rings rapid spinning.

'She can control it at a distance by her will?'

The ring went flying into its masters hands, the girl instead of throwing it again, ran towards Xephon to attack; swinging her arms around her body and rotating the ring between arms in a rhythmic fashion, creating a deadly wall of razor sharp steel.

Xephon rushed to meet her but didn't use his sword, he waited until he was in range and aimed a diving tackle at her legs, feet first, knocking her over and stopping her attack.

However the girl didn't land face down as Xephon had expected, instead she turned the fall into a roll and came back on her feet ready for a new attack.

"Your really fast." she told him.

"You don't know the half of it."

Xephon ran to attack again but the girl continued to retreat out of range of his attacks.

'Damn it', Xephon thought, 'my attacks are no good if I can't get close enough to use them.'

"Why don't you stretch your legs?" Weiss asked his master.

Xephon smiled, the thought hadn't occurred to him. He had only recently mastered the ability and it was still relatively new to him.

"All right let's try it." Xephon dropped his defense and left himself wide open, waiting for Mia to attack.

"What are you doing?" She spoke in surprise.

"I'm just proving how pathetic your attacks are, I bet you couldn't even hit me from here."

Mia scowled and took the bait, "I'll show you pathetic, Reverse Hurricane!"

Her ring leveled itself again and began to spin again, only this time it was vertical and spinning so fast that the wind itself was forming a small whirlwind of blades around it but in an opposite direction proving how fast it was. Mia motioned forward with her arms and the ring threw itself straight at Xephon The metal was moving so fast and the wind was so concentrated around the ring that the earth was being torn up in a line behind the ring. Xephon was just standing there waiting and at the last second vanished.

"Huh? Where'd you go?" she cried in confusion losing her concentration, which caused her ring to crash to the ground. She looked round frantically searching for her opponent and didn't notice a slight breeze that blew past her.

Mia suddenly realized that someone was standing behind her but before she could turn around was struck in the back of the head. She stumbled forward dizzily but didn't fall down.

Xephon stood behind her and put out his blade, flat end facing himself and Mia. "Ewig Schlaf!"

Xephon slammed his right palm onto the flat of the blade and two wings spread out from the hilt then flapped causing a great gust of what could be described as a current of wind with black lines in it to have them visibly seen. The current hit Mia strait in the back.

Mia felt the blow from behind, this time she was sent flying forwards before crashing into a brick wall where she quickly lost consciousness.

Xephon stepped forward to speak to the council representative who had been watching their battle.

"Congratulations you have won all three of your battles." The representative said this with just a hint of contempt in his voice.

Xephon stared at him for a moment before asking why he was acting the way he was.

"You did not need to be so violent with the girl, you could have just left after you struck her. She had lost spirit control and was out of Furyoku."

"Really I hadn't noticed, I was too busy worrying about whether she would cut my head off." was Xephon's reply, which barely disguised his anger.

The representative clearly didn't believe him, because he continued to talk in the in the same contemptuous voice.

"Having cleared two of the three preliminary rounds, your next challenge is to find Patch village where the finals are to take place. If you cannot find the village or do not arrive in time for your match you will be disqualified, additional information will be sent to your oracle bell in one weeks time."

Xephon listened to this and then walked off without another word, he'd heard all needed and had no desire to stick around and talk with someone who clearly didn't like him.

End of Flashback

"What do you want?" he asked Mia in a bored voice.

Mia didn't answer immediately, she jumped down from the pile of scrap she had been standing on and walked towards him. Xephon then noticed that she was holding her ring in one hand and tensed himself in case she attacked.

Mia walked right up to him and poked him in the chest at the same time saying,

"You big meanie, I want a rematch!"

Xephon was slightly taken aback he had expected her to just attack him and not bother with the verbal challenge.

"Why? You lost the first match so get over it. A rematch won't change the original result."

"But you cheated!"

"No I didn't." Xephon replied determined not to loose his temper.

"Yes you did you- hey where are you going?"

"Sorry but I've got better things to do than look after a spoiled brat like you."

"Who are you calling a brat?" Xephon didn't bother to reply and just kept walking.

"Hey get back here!" Mia shouted and at the same time threw her ring, which missed Xephon by inches. Xephon stopped and turned to look at her.

"What makes you think you'll do any better this time round?"

"You couldn't touch me before you disappeared." Mia reminded him.

"That was because you kept running away." Xephon turned again and started walking again.

"Don't you walk away from me, I want my rematch!" as Mia said this she sent her ring at his back and flew straight towards Xephon. Xephon kept walking but at the last minute pivoted on his left foot, as he did so his coat went flying out behind him and was sliced clean off by the spinning ring.

Xephon saw half his coat lying on the floor and looked towards Mia again and said simply,

"Your going to regret that."


	8. Chapter 8

Xephon and Mia had been fighting for nearly twenty minutes and Mia was starting to get tired, Xephon on the other hand showed no sign of relenting.

'Damn I didn't think he was this good,' Mia thought to herself as she tried desperately to block Xephon's attacks.

"Mia we need to think of something or he's going to win." Kyra told her master.

"I know, I know but I can't do anything he's too fast."

⌠Perhaps we could try a more unorthodox approach?" Kyra said, telepathically showing her master what she had in mind.

Mia grinned as she saw what her spirit was suggesting.

"All right lets do it."

Mia parried Xephon's attack and dropped to floor, she landed on her hands and was able to do a back flip that caught Xephon on the chin and sent him reeling backwards. Xephon rose slowly and gave a cold penetrating stare.

"Not bad kid I didn't expect you to last this long, but I'm done playing games, go home before I hurt you."

Mia fumed silently and thought to herself 'Who does this guy think he is? And where doe he get off calling me a kid? I bet he's no older than me!'

"We'll see who gets hurt!" she yelled and threw her ring at Xephon. It sailed towards him but he simply raised his sword and deflected it. He started to walk towards Mia but then stopped and turned as though remembering something.

"That's right they come back." Mia told him in her sing song voice as the ring erupted from one of the remaining towers of scrap metal and hurtled towards Xephon, who only just had time to drop to floor as they went flying over his head.

However the ring had caused the metal tower to loose balance and it started to fall.

Mia watched as the towers collapsed on top of her opponent pinning him under tons of metal.

"Yesss! I got him!" Mia started celebrating, jumping around excitedly and performing various acrobatic flips, her hair dancing in the wind.

"That was quite clever." a voice remarked from behind her.

Mia was so excited she didn't bother to turn round to see who she was talking to.

"Yeah I know, he never saw it coming."

"It's a good thing for you he didn't." observed the voice.

Mia calmed down a little as she realized that the voice was right. She had nearly been beaten and it was only luck that the tower had collapsed. 'When he gets out of there he's going to be real pissed off.' she thought to herself.

"Hey shouldn't he have gotten out there by now?" She said to herself "I thought he was stronger than that."

"Maybe you beat him." the voice suggested.

"You think so?" Mia replied in excitement.

"No."

For the first time Mia wondered who she was talking to and started to turn round.

"Hey who are-"

"Tote Welt, Schwarzer Sarg!"

Mia's world became black and white and she saw that she was trapped in some type of bubble.

"EKLIPSE!!"

Almost as soon as she heard that word she began to feel excruciating pain coursing through her; it felt as though someone was stabbing white-hot daggers into every pore of her skin. She yelled but no sound came out and after a few seconds she blacked out.

Xephon watched as she fell to the floor unconscious, steam was still coming off her body from the force of his attack. He relaxed and disengaged spirit control and Weiss formed in front of him.

"That was not necessary master."

"I know but she annoyed me."

"You could have killed her."

"I doubt it, she is far too stubborn to die that easily."

Xephon walked off towards what remained of his coat and checked whether it was possible to have it repaired. He sighed in disgust and tossed the material over his shoulder where it landed on the ground with an unusually heavy sounding 'Thud' and began to walk away.

"You aren't just going to leave here are you?" Weiss asked in surprise as his master started leaving.

"Why shouldn't I? She attacked me, there is no reason for me to help her. Besides the nearest hospital is at least a few miles away."

"You could take her to Master Yoh's house.' suggested Weiss.

"Forget it, there's no reason why I should help her at all." with that said Xephon turned and started to walk away from the unconscious girl.

"Your father wouldn't have left her." Weiss remarked with a note of disappointment in his voice.

Xephon stopped walking and grabbed the ring around his right ring finger as though it burned him. He turned slowly until he was facing his guardian spirit and Weiss saw the cold rage in his master's eyes and realized that he had gone too far.

"I'm sorry master I only meant-"

"Enough Weiss, I think it's time you had some rest." as Xephon said this he drew the memorial tablet from his pocket and trapped Weiss inside. Xephon looked down at the girl again and his anger faded.

Flashback

We see a young Xephon about five years old playing in the park with a man who appears to be in thirties. They are kicking a ball around and one of the child's kicks causes the ball to fly up into a tree and knocks out a bird nest that had been built in its branches.

The man goes over to look at the nest while the child picks up the ball and starts playing again.

"Come on dad I want to play some more!"

"In a minute son I just want to check something."

Curious the boy walks over to see what his father is doing and sees that there is a wounded bird in the nest. The boys father is examining the bird and sees that one of the wings are broken. Delicately the man picks the bird up and walks over to a bench and sits down, he holds the bird in both hands and a soft light shines from them. The glow slowly fades and the bird is still for a moment but then jumps up and fly's away.

The young Xphon who had been watching all this walks up to his father and asks,

"Why did you do that dad?"

The man looks down at his son and smiles.

"Because I could, a shaman doesn't need any more reason that, remember Xephon a shaman is meant to help all things, living or not."

End of Flashback

"You were a good man father." Xephon whispered, he looked at the girl one more time and sighed. Walking over to her, he picked her up and slung her over his shoulder and started to walk back.

Yoh, Horo, Ren and the other shaman were up at the graveyard training for the tournament. Straw dummies had been set up for them to practice their attacks and there were various weights lying on the ground. Although none of them felt like using them because Anna had forced them all to wear weighted wristbands and shoes so that everything they did was 5 times more difficult then it normally was.

"Oh man why do we have to wear these stupid things?" Horo moan indicating to the weighted wrist bands "My arms feel so heavy I can barely lift them, I'd like to see Anna try and do anything with these on."

"Mistress Anna is not competing in the tournament and therefore does not have to practice with these weights." Rio remarked to Horo in a scolding tone of voice. "Indeed you should be honoured that she is helping you to the train for the tournament."

"Would you two stop your whining, I'm trying to concentrate." Ren told them as he lay on the floor trying to do sit-ups, "Now where was I? Oh yeah 45,46,47,"

"21,22,23," Horo muttered in Ren's ear.

"24,25,26," Ren continued not noticing that he had been tricked.

"101,102,103," Horo muttered again trying not to laugh.

"104,105- Hey wait a minute!"

Horo burst out laughing and rolled on the floor clutching his side.

"That's It!" Ren yelled "Bason!" as Ren said this he grabbed his Kwan-do and aimed at Horo's head. Horo ducked at the last second and Ren only managed to cut off a chunk of Horo's hair.

"My Hair! Right you are so dead, Kororo into the snowboard!"

As the two of them started fighting Manta just watched them with his mouth open.

"Unbelievable, a minute ago they were too tired to move now look at them." he remarked to Yoh who had just finished his laps.

"Yeah they just needed some incentive I guess." Yoh replied in his usual carefree manner.

"I don't see how you guys can go on living, I mean the way Anna treats you, you should all have died from exhaustion. She just seems to spend her time thinking of new ways to torture you guys."

"Your being too hard on her Manta, Anna really cares about us that's why she'd making us do all this work so we won't get hurt in the tournament. Anyway I'm sure Anna does a lot more with her spare time then think of new ways of training."

--------------------------------------------

Anna was watching TV in the main room, it was some type of soap opera and she was busy tutting to herself over the story.

"How can she be so naive he's just going to leave her again like last time, oh well I suppose she'll never learn."

Pilika, Jun and Tamao were playing some type of card game on the other side of the room, Tamao was winning which seemed to be really annoying Jun.

"How can you win four games in a row? Its not possible you've got to be cheating." Jun cried in exasperation at a very nervous Tamao.

"I'm not cheating, you just aren't playing very well." Tamao replied meekly.

Pilika shook her head as she heard the two arguing, Jun had been in a bad mood ever since she had woke up this morning but wouldn't tell anyone why. She looked back at two girls and saw Tamao cowering under Jun's acid tongue. Looking for away to change the subject before things got out of hand Pilika said,

"What do think of Xephon Jun?"

Jun stiffened at the mention of Xephon's name and turned very slowly to face Pilika, who sensed that she'd just asked the wrong question.

"I don't like him." was all Jun would say. Pilika breathed a sigh of relief, certain that Jun had been about to explode. She settled herself more comfortably and looked at Tamao.

"What about you Tamao?"

"He's really cold, it's like he doesn't have any feelings." Tamao replied in her usual timid voice.

"Yeah I noticed that too, he doesn't seem to have a sense of humor he takes everything real seriously. He worse then Ren, at least he gets angry. Xephon just doesn't seem to have any emotions. How about you Anna what do you think?" Pilika asked.

"I like him." The other girls sweat dropped anime style at this statement.

"How can you like him? I didn't think you would be able to like anyone who would stand up to you!" Jun asked in outrage.

"Well he doesn't slack off and unlike you he's quiet. I don't understand why you hate him so much, so he hypnotized you, big deal get over it. He didn't do anything to you so why do you care. Oh about him standing up to me, I've got a surprise for Xephon, which should be here sometime tomorrow." Anna replied in a cool voice.

"I don't trust him." Jun muttered.

After Jun had said this they heard the front door open and close.

"Strange the boys shouldn't be back yet" Pilika said in a confused tone.

"Not if they know what's good for them." Anna remarked icily.

"I think its Xephon." Tamao said quietly.

Sure enough they heard Xephon's voice drift down the corridor.

"Anna where do you keep your first aid kit?"

"Room on your left, top shelf." Anna replied not taking her eyes off the TV.

"Why does he need a first aid kit?" asked Pilika puzzled.

"How should I know?" Jun snapped.

Just then Xephon walked past and Tamao noticed the he was holding an unconscious girl on his left shoulder and had the first aid kit in his right hand. Tamao nearly screamed in horror as she noticed the girl's face contorted in silent pain. Her mouth was hanging open with a small bit of drool coming out, her eyes open but were completely white.

"Who is that?" she gasped in surprise.

Pilika turned round and to see what Tamao was talking about and her eyes widened in shock. "Hey Xephon why have you-" but Xephon just kept walking so Pilika got up and went to head him off and was followed by Tamao, Anna and a reluctant Jun.

Pilika ran and got in front of Xephon and blocked his path. He looked down at her and asked, "What do you want?"

"Why are you carrying that girl on your shoulder?"

"Because if I carried her in both hands I wouldn't be able to hold the first aid kit."

"That's not what I meant."

"I know, now could you please move."

"Not until you tell me who she is."

"Sigh, her names Mia and she was my last opponent in the preliminary matches."

"But the preliminary matches finished a few days ago."

"She challenged me to a rematch."

"You mean you did all that to her?" Jun cried in outrage.

"Yes."

"Why did you bring her here?" Anna asked Xephon giving him an cold glare.

'I've been asking myself that same question the whole way here.' Xephon thought to himself but instead he replied, "I was feeling generous."

"Yeah right." muttered Jun.

"What ever, could you move now?" Xephon directed his question to Pilika who was still blocking his way.

"What are you going to do with her?" Tamao asked meekly.

"Well lets see, I've got a first aid kit in my right hand so I think I'll lay her down on a bed and slit her throat." Xephon replied without turning around.

"You can't do that!" Tamao said in shock.

"Really Tamao, you need to learn that not everyone means what they say." Anna told the pink haired girl disapprovingly, "Now as for you," she directed her remark at Xephon.

"Hand the girl over to us and we'll take care of her."

"Why would you want to take care of her?■

"I don't but you have better things to do, like teaching my Yoh that new ability."

"Fine." Xephon shrugged and gave Mia to Jun who staggered under her weight and then handed Mia's weapons to Pilika.

"Hey be careful I nearly dropped her!" Jun told the black haired boy.

"Do I look like I care?"

"You cared enough to carry her all the way here." Pilika told him.

Xephon ignored this and turned to face Anna "So where is Yoh?"

"He's up training at the graveyard."

Without another word Xephon turned and headed out the door leaving behind a very pissed off Jun and an annoyed Anna.

Tote Welt, Schwarzer Sarg- Dead World, Black Coffin

Eklips-Eclipse


	9. Chapter 9

'Well this is annoying.' Anna thought to herself as she stared at the unconscious girl Jun was holding. "She looks pretty beat up so we'd better get started, Jun take her to my room and we'll get started." Anna told the green haired Chinese girl.

"But that's upstairs." Complained Jun.

"So you would rather we undress her and bandage her here where all the guys will see her when they come back?" Anna asked with a dark expression on her face.

Jun grumbled but didn't argue and carried the unconscious Mia upstairs, followed closely by Pilika, Tamao and Anna.

Just as they had set Mia down on the bed the phone downstairs rang.

"I'll get it." Anna told them, with a bit more enthusiasm than normal. They heard her rush down stairs and pick up the phone.

"Yes it's Anna. We spoke yesterday. Yeah we're at Funbari hill near the graveyard at the edge of town you can't miss us. You'll be here tomorrow morning? Great I'm sure he'll be pleased to see you."

At the last statement the laugh from the person on the other end of the phone was audible to all those upstairs, for some reason it sent shivers down their spines.

"Anna who was that?" Tamao asked the young Ikato as she re-entered the room.

"Someone I've invited round tomorrow."

"Who?"

"You'll see, now come on we need to get started."

The four girls worked quietly and efficiently as they tended to the unconscious girl. First removing her damaged clothes, then wiping off the blood and then slowly bandaging her wounds.

"She took quite a beating." Pilika observed.

"Yes I noticed that, it seems Xephon doesn't like going easy on people, Tamao could you hand me that cloth, oh would you stop cringing it's only blood." Jun snapped at Tamao who handed Jun the bloodied cloth at arms length, as though afraid it was going to explode.

"Yes but if you notice she doesn't have any broken bones and the cuts she has aren't that deep. If you ask me I think Xephon was being careful, you saw how fast he was when he fought Ren, I'm guessing he could easily have killed her but he didn't." Anna remarked in her usual expressionless tone.

"I didn't think he was that good, maybe she was just too skilled for him to be able to hurt her that much." Jun replied, annoyed that Xephon was being defended.

"No I don't think so, if she was as good as that Xephon would have been hurt as well wouldn't he? And he seemed perfectly fine when he walked in." Pilika said.

"Hey look what I found." Tamao exclaimed showing the group a black memorial tablet. "I found it in her shorts pocket, should I open it?" she asked the others.

"Not yet, let's finish working first, the last thing we need is a rouge spirit roaming around the house." Anna told Tamao curtly.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It took Xephon ten minutes to reach the graveyard, it wasn't difficult to find because you could hear Ren yelling a mile away.

Xephon made his way up the hill towards the cemetery and stopped to get a good vantage point so that he could see what they were doing.

Ren and Horo were fighting again but Haru had come to accept this as normal. Rio was arguing with Tokageru about some new attack he had come up with. Yoh was leaning against a tree and was talking to Manta who had his laptop out and appeared to be reading something and Choco was over by the gravestones trying to get some of the ghosts to laugh at his jokes.

"This is training?" Xephon asked bewildered.

"Actually master I believe they are taking a break."

"They expect to win the tournament like this? Huh. well I guess I'd better get going, the sooner I start the sooner I'll finish." Xephon replied and began walking up to the everyone.

"I'm sure Anna would be real impressed by your training efforts Yoh." Xephon said as he came up behind the relaxed shaman.

"Huh, what the? Ow!" Yoh said as he lost balanced and fell over.

"Hi Xephon we were just taking a little break." explained Yoh as he got back up.

"For half an hour?"

Yoh hung his head as he heard this "You were watching us?"

"Yes."

"You aren't going to tell Anna are you?" Yoh asked in a worried voice.

"No, I know what it's like being forced to work day and night. Anyway Anna doesn't seem that tough, you guys should consider yourselves lucky."

"What!" exclaimed both Yoh and Manta at once. "You have seen what she puts us through haven't you?"

"Yes but her training has never threatened your life has it?" Xephon replied.

"Well..."

"I'm not talking about the way she slaps whenever you're late or make a small mistake. I'm talking about the kind of training where you have to fight for your life. My sister would wake me up every morning at five and force me to swim against the current of the river."

"That doesn't seem so bad." Yoh remarked.

"And if you weren't strong enough you went over the edge of the waterfall, 500 feet down."

'Ouch.' That was all Manta could think of.

"Then there was the time she thought I wasn't running fast enough so she had her 'little' pet chase me to make me go faster."

"When you say little pet..." Yoh began.

"A lion. So trust me when I say that Anna isn't that bad, she may be cold but believe me there are far worse."

"Hey Xephon, how's it going? When did you get here?" Horo had only just noticed Xephon's presence and his question alerted all the other shaman who came to gather round.

"I've been here for a while and I must say your training style seems truly unique." Xephon answered the blue haired shaman.

"What? Oh yeah thanks I like to get a good workout." Horo replied.

"You realise he just insulted you?" Ren told the hyped up snowboarder.

"Huh? How would you know?" Horo asked indignantly.

"Because I have a brain that's larger than pea." Ren said calmly.

Before Horo could reply Rio butted in, "Ah Mister Xephon you have come to teach us a new ability have you not?"

"Actually I came to teach Yoh," Xephon answered "but you can watch if you want."

Turning back to Yoh Xephon saw that he had oversouled with Amidamaru and was looking anxious to begin.

"Don't bother with your oversoul you won't need it at this stage."

Yoh complied and released Amidamaru from his weapon and waited for the next instruction.

"Good now the first thing you'll need to do is focus your Furyoku into your hand and-"

As Xephon spoke these words a black cloud appeared out of nowhere and filled the sky, it started to rain and lightning could be seen in the distance followed closely by thunder.

"Aww man where did this storm come from?" Horo yelled over the noise of the thunder, while holding his snowboard above his head.

"How should I know?" Ren shouted back.

"Lets just try and get back to my place." Yoh told the others as he started running.

They all started running after Yoh but Xehpon stayed behind and looked up at the sky.

"This isn't right." he muttered to himself. He felt someone tugging on his leg and looked down to see Manta who had stayed behind as well.

"Come on we need to get out of here, you don't even have a coat on."

With that said Manta jumped on to bike and began heading back followed closely by Xephon.

-  
In the darkness of the one of the trees a figure could be seen sitting on one of the braches above where Yoh and the gang had been talking. A flash of lightning suddenly illuminated his features and the figure appeared to be identical to Yoh.

A smaller figure jumped down from one of the higher branches and sat down beside the first figure.

"Master Hao left that very close." the smaller figure remarked.

"Indeed I did, but I wanted to see where he would start. It seems that I will have to act more quickly to remove him, I was hoping to avoid a confrontation but now it seems that will not be possible" as Hao finished speaking he immediately vanished in a wall of fire.


	10. Chapter 10

Xephon made his way quickly to Yoh's house easily keeping up with Manta's bike. As he got to the front door he saw that it was open, slowly he made his way in, remembering what had happened the last time he had come in here when the front door had been left open.

Xephon relaxed when he saw that everyone was sitting around a table in the main room talking to each other quietly.

"Hey Xephon what you took you so long? Grab a seat." Yoh told him in his usual cheery voice. "We were just talking about what we think the next round of the tournament would be like."

"It won't be as easy as the preliminarys were." Xephon replied.

"Dude you are so negative, can't you just relax and have fun for once? Even Ren can do that."

"I'd watch what you say." Ren told the blue haired Ainu coldly.

"Yeah like your gonna do anything about it." Horo muttered.

"What was that?" Ren asked with deadly calm. Almost immediately the two began fighting and this brought the girls down from upstairs to yell at them until they stopped.

"Hey Anna what are you doing upstairs?" Yoh asked the ice queen nonchalantly.

"We're cleaning up some one else's mess." Jun answered before Anna could respond and gave Xephon a cold glare. Xephon just shrugged and started talking to Manta, asking him whether he knew anything about Patch village.

It was roughly 11pm before they all went to sleep and although Xephon wouldn't admit it he'd had a good time. The gang hadn't forced him to make conversation like other people did, they'd let him be but had listened whenever he said anything. The only downside to the evening had been when he had been about to go to bed and had run into Jun in the corridor.

She'd tried to slap him but he caught her wrist and held it until she looked him in the eye.

"What did you do to her?" Jun asked anger in her voice.

"What are you talking about?"

"That girl, Mia, the one you brought here. We cleaned her wounds and bandaged her up but she won't wake up. Anna tried to get in her mind but said that she was in too much pain for her to do anything."

Xephon frowned for a moment. He'd been sure he hadn't used that much power on the girl but if she was in that much pain then maybe he had over done it. Don't worry about it, he thought to himself, there's nothing you can do now. You didn't use enough to kill her, it will probably just be a few more days before the force of the attack wears off, I hope.

"Don't worry about her she's not dead and she'll be fine in a few days." Xephon told the green haired Chinese girl.

Jun stared at Xephon for a few moments and when she spoke there was a hint of astonishment in her voice, "You don't care do you? You really don't care. You carried her all the way here but if she died you'd just shrug your shoulders and act as if nothing happened. How can you be so heartless?"

Xephon took a deep breath and kept his face blank as he replied "Because I learned that a heart was useless a long time ago." he then walked off to his room trying to suppress the emotions the words had caused in him. Leaving Jun staring at his back, speechless.

-  
Xephon woke up early again the next day and sat down in the back garden trying to think in scilence, but he couldn't calm down. He kept remembering Jun's words and they made him uncomfortable. She doesn't know anything about me, she has no right to judge me, even as he thought this it didn't make him feel any better.  
Finally deciding that he wasn't going to get any thinking done he decided to get some breakfast and then try and work off some of his anger at the scrap heap.

As he finished his breakfast he went to grab his sword and as he headed for the door someone called out.

"Where are you going?"

Xephon turned round and saw Anna at the top of the stairs. She still looked quite tired and she hadn't dressed properly yet.

"You should get some more sleep." Xephon told the blond Ikato he headed back to the door.

"I asked you where you were going." There was steel now in Anna voice as she got into dictator mode.

"Sense when has it been your business to put your nose in my life? Your not my friend and your sure as hell not any family member, so don't bother asking again." Xephon replied in a smoothed over cold voice. Without another word he turned and left before Anna could respond.

-

It was 11am and Anna had just thrown out Yoh and the other to get some training done before they went to search for Patch village in a few days.  
Anna looked at the clock on the wall again and started tapping her foot on the floor.

'She should be here by now, she said tomorrow morning so where is she?'

"Anna what are you so worked up about?" Pilika asked

"Her guest hasn't shown up yet, isn't that right?" Jun answered. Anna nodded briefly and then started pacing the room.

"Just who did you invite anyway?" Tamao asked from her corner of the room where she had been reading.

"Xephon's sister."

The other three girls stared at Anna for a moment before asking 'Why?' in unison.

Anna stopped pacing and gave a cold smile. "Well when Xephon stood up to me he said that he would always be one step ahead of me because his sister was worse than I am."

The other girl's mouths all fell open at this statement and Anna gave a dry smile.

"I now I didn't believe it either but I decided to go and look up his sister, I found out quite a lot of interesting stuff by the way. Apparently the Krisall's are as rich as the Tao's. They own shares in some major business corporation and Xephon's sister manages all of it by herself. I managed to find a phone number and gave her a call, apparently they haven't seen each other for years because both of them travel so much. When I told her that Xephon was here she basically booked a first-class ticket on the first plane to Japan she said she'd be here this morning but she hasn't shown up yet."

As soon as Anna had said this there was a knock at the front door. Anna walked over to door very slowly and opened it.

Outside there was a woman who appeared to be in twenty's. She was surprisingly tall and wore a very serious looking black suit with black heels and her silver hair was hung loosely down to her shoulders and was carrying a grey briefcase with a black handle. She was also wearing black sunglasses but when she saw Anna she took them off, revealing a pair of ice blue eyes.

'Hello I'm looking for someone called Anna." The woman told the young Ikato in perfect japanese.

"That would be me." Anna replied.

The woman looked surprised for a moment but then held out her hand.

"Well it's good to meet you. I'm Zahara, Xephon's sister. May I come in?"

Anna led Zahara inside and introduced her to the other girls. Zahara was polite and complemented each of them,

"Pilika, hello pleased to meet you. You're an Ainu aren't you? I visited an Ainu family in the mountains once, the scenery is breathtaking."

Pilika took the compliments with a smile.

"Tamao, that's a cute name, I like your pink hair. You're a psychic? Wow I've always wanted to be able to see the future, your really lucky."

Tamao was still in awe of the woman's beauty to say anything.

"Jun Tao? Really I know your family, I used to work for your grandparents how are they? They were always kind to me."

Jun was taken aback slightly by Zahara's behaviour; she had expected her to be more like her brother but she seemed to be nearly the opposite.

"Are you sure your related to Xephon?" Jun asked the silver haired woman.

"Yes I am," Replied Zahara with a laugh, "has he been giving you the silent treatment? Well don't worry that's normal for him. He doesn't really socialize with people that much, so he just acts cold, but he's got a heart, and a good one at that, although he'd never admit to it."

"I wouldn't be so sure about that." Jun replied.

Zahara frowned "What do you mean?"

"Come with me." Jun led Zahara upstairs to Anna's bedroom where Mia was still sleeping. "Your brother brought her here yesterday after he finished beating her up and left her for us to clean up. We've cleaned her wounds but she's in some type of coma and we can't wake her up."

Zahara frowned again and turned towards Jun with her eyes darkened under her eyebrows, suddenly she seemed a lot more like Xephon. "You don't like my brother."

It was a statement not a question and the words were covered in ice.

"What is there to like?" Jun retorted, "He's a heartless little-"

"Be careful Frau Tao," whispered Zahara with her german accent more pronounced in her japanese, "I may be more emotional than my brother but I can be far more cruel then he is and I won't stand for anyone to speak ill of him. He restricts himself, I do not."

"Please don't fight." cried Tamao running between the two of them. As she did so Zahara's good humour seemed to come rushing back.

"Dear child whatever made you think that?" Zahara told the pink haired girl pleasantly, "I wouldn't dream of fighting with one of my host's guests. Now as to the problem of this young girl here..." Zahara let the worlds tail off and she walked over to Mia and put her hand on her forehead and closed her eyes.

"Dear me," she muttered "You have gotten strong haven't you brother."

Zahara removed her hand and turned to the rest of the girls who had made their way upstairs "She's perfectly fine, if we left her to her own devices she would wake up in about four days. However I can speed up that process."

As Zahara said this she drew a small silver piccolo from an inside pocket of her suit, she put it to her mouth and her fingers started moving along it's length. The sounds that came out were light and melodious, at the same time Anna noticed that the light in the room appeared to get brighter.

Zahara continued to play the instrument for 5 minutes or so and then put it away and waved her fingers over Mia's forehead. Almost immediately Mia began to move.

~~--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There was darkness everywhere, she couldn't see, she couldn't breathe. She tried to move but was stopped by a wall of fire that was more painful than anything she could imagine.

"Help me." she whispered. There was no reply. She began to sink into despair, no one will ever find me... I'm trapped, there's nothing I can do...

She felt a breeze across her cheek and looked up startled. The breeze was accompanied by the sounds of birds singing and the sound of a stream gurgling.

All at once the darkness vanished, she could see, she could breathe. She tried to move but the wall of fire remained; but it was not as painful as before. Beyond the fire she could see a light, a way out.

'There's no way I'm staying here.' she thought to herself. She tensed herself and ran through the fire and into the light.

"Owww" Mia groaned. Her body hurt like hell; all of her joints seemed to be on fire and her head felt as though someone had letting off dynamite inside.

She realised she was lying down and struggled to get into a sitting position. Her body argued with her judgement and Mia didn't have the strength to argue back and ended up lying down again.

Maybe I should just try and open my eyes, she did so and the light nearly blinded her but after a few seconds her eyes adjusted and she saw five women watching her, four of them with their mouths open. The fifth women however just seemed to have a knowing smile on her face.

"How do you feel?" she asked kindly.

Mia thought a moment before replying "Like a punching bag."

"That's not surprising, my brother did quite a number on you."

"Your brother?"

"Yes my name is Zahara Krisall, sister to Xephon Krisall."

"Who's Xephon?

Zahara frowned for a moment and said, "What is the last thing you remember?"

Mia thought for a moment but couldn't seem to recall anything past waking up in the bed. She told Zahara this and the woman's frown increased.

"Oh dear, you seem to have a partial case of amnesia, that means your guard was down when my brother hit you. Don't worry I should be able to deal with that as well, now just close your eyes."

Mia did so and Zahra placed her hand back on the girl's forehead. The temperature in the room dropped dramatically, so much so that whenever anyone breathed a mist formed in front of their mouths. This lasted a few seconds and then warmth slowly made it's way back into the room. Zahara removed her hand and backed off a little, giving Mia some room to breathe.

"My head." began Mia but she cut short by Zahara.

"Yes your head will hurt for a while but I think you'll find that you can remember a lot more now."

Mia shook her head slowly and got up, her legs almost buckled beneath her so she decided to sit down again. "I remember fighting in the junkyard but I was sure I beat Xephon."

"Why were you so sure?" countered Zahara.

"Well for starters I buried him under a ton of metal."

"How did you do that?" asked Anna who had been unusually silent.

Mia started describing the battle she'd had with Xephon; how he had starting beating her and then how she had knocked over the tower of burnt-out cars on top of him.

"Did you actually see it fall on top of him?" Zahara questioned.

"Yeah, Well sort of I didn't see it hit him because of all the dust it made when it hit the ground but there's no way he could have gotten out of the way in time." Mia replied and was annoyed to see the older woman smile. "I'm not making this up!" she almost shouted at the group.

"I never said that you were, but I wonder if you could answer something for me, after you knocked down the tower did you notice a breeze or a sudden gust of wind?"

Mia thought for a moment, she had been so busy celebrating over her supposed victory that she couldn't be certain.

'Wait a minute my hair kept blowing into my face when I was jumping around...' "Um yeah there a breeze why do you ask?"

"Because my brother has the ability to move so fast he..he uh... well I forget what he does but he moves fast and when he stops you feel the wind blow."

Zahara smiled shyly at her attempted explanation.

"That's not fair!" Mia pouted as she said this and Zahara raised her eyebrows.

"Really? Why not?"

"Because I can't do that!"

Zahara laughed at this statement and replied, "You really are childish aren't you? Think about it, if everyone were the same then there would be no reason for the shaman tournament. You may not have my brother's abilities but I'm sure there are things you can do that Xephon wouldn't be able to manage."

Mia thought about this for a while and seemed to calm down, "Yeah I guess your right."

"I know I'm right, now there's one more thing I want to ask you. Why did my brother agree to fight you in the first place? I would have expected to him to have just walked off.■

"He was about to walk off but..." Mia's voice faded away.

"What did you do?" asked Jun curiously.

"Well I attacked him."

"While his back was turned?" Pilika questioned.

Mia hung her head and mumbled "Yeah."

"And you hit him?" Zahara's voice was full of surprise, "Well, well, well, either my brother is getting lazy or you're stronger than you look."

"Why do you sound so surprised? Most people will get hit if they're attacked from behind." Anna remarked in her cool voice.

"Well it's just that, my brother may be a bit oblivious of what goes on around him, by his own darn will, Weiss on the other hand is sharper than any sword; there's no way he wouldn't have seen the attack coming."

"Well I didn't really hit him." Mia confessed "He dodged my attack but I kind of cut his coat in two and that seemed to be a bad move cause he got really pissed off."

"Was it a long dark grey coat?"Zahara.

"Um yeah."

"I designed that for him." Zahara's voice was just above a whisper, "I didn't think he liked it. He always complained about it being heavy."

"How can a coat be too heavy?" Mia asked in confusion.

"Well I had lead weights put into the lining."

"How much weight did you put in the coat?" Anna question the silver haired woman sharply.

"Oh about 180 pounds, nothing drastic." Zahara replied.

The other girls stared at Zahara open mouthed for a few seconds while Anna furiously had her own thoughts.

'180 pounds no way! Yoh doesn't even weigh 80 pounds and Xephon was able to beat Ren easily with it on. How fast would he be without it? Damn! I'll have to increase Yoh's training while they're looking for Patch village."

The group questioned Zahara for a while asking her what training techniques she had used on Xephon and how they worked.

"You threw him over a water fall!"

"You made him try and out run a Lion!"

At this point Tamao, who had been quiet and trying to block out the thoughts of what Zahara kept describing for the last half hour, had turned to Mia and asked her something.

"By the way, what's your name?"

Everyone seemed to quiet down at the moment in realization of the fact that they had been talking to the girl and had not known her name.

"Oh, I'm Mia, and....how did I get here in the first place? Did you guys find me in the junkyard after the fight or what?"

"Oh didn't we tell you? Xephon carried you here." Anna remarked in a bored tone of voice and then turned and continued questioning Zahara.

"Why'd he do that?"

"He said he was feeling 'generous.'" Jun scoffed at her own reply; indicating how unlikely she thought that was.

"Generous? Him? The only thing he cares about is himself. He certainly didn't care about how much he hurt me when we were fighting." Mia replied.

"Do not be so quick to judge my brother, he has every right to be as he is." Zahara voice had suddenly taken on an icy tone that rivaled Anna's.

"Really, well why don't you enlighten us then on what rights he has to act like a jerk." Jun told the silver haired woman with a sneer on her face.

"As you wish." as Zahara said this she stood up and raised her right hand into the air while holding her piccolo. A wind seemed to blow through the room as multiple musical notes were played and the room grew dark. Suddenly the dark room changed into a scenery, changing as Zahara began to talk.

"Imagine you are five years old. You are young and innocent and know nothing of death or disease. You have a loving family and a good home, your father is much respected because of various shamanic skills such as healing and exorcism."

A young boy is seen playing a field with his father, a man with distinguished features and dark hair, and his mother, a stunning woman with bright blond hair andblue eyes. Then the child is shown sleeping in a good home.

"The world is a beautiful place for you and you have nothing to fear."

"Sounds terrible." Mutters Jun from her seat.

Zahara continues as though she has not heard Jun, "Then one day people whom you had thought were your friends turn on you, they fear your father for his power and suspect that he will use his power to destroy them. So they lure him away from his home and murder him when he his defenceless."

The father man is shown walking through the woods with the young boy. Suddenly he freezes. The man looks around as his son looks up at him questioningly. Suddenly the man turns and shouts.

"Run Xephon! Run!" The boy does so, and as he runs the boy turns his head to see his father surrounded by men with rifles. Before his father has a chance to react he is shot at least 13 times from all directions.

"However that is not enough for the killers, they decide that the Shaman's family must also perish. They go to his home to murder his wife but they do not even allow her a peaceful death. They tie her down and build a bonfire around her and light it and then ride away as she is screaming in pain."

The room changes to show images following each of Zahara's words and rests on the image of bonfire piled high near a forest and a dark figure can be seen in the heat of the blaze. The image shifts suddenly to focus on the woods near the bonfire and a small child can be seen cowering by a tree.

"However the killers do not find the shaman's son, you, who had stayed hidden in the woods and was forced to watch the death of his own mother knowing there was nothing he could do to save her. From then on, you are never the same."

The world changed to show two coffins side by side, surrounded by many individuals, but in front of them all were Zahara, the young Xephon, silent and grieving, and a young man with white and black hair and a calmly serious face.

Light slowly filters back into the room and each of the girls have become deadly pale, Tamao is weeping on Pilika's shoulder and Jun eyes are wide in shock as are Mia's.

"How can people be so cruel?" Mia whispers.

"It is a human reaction, what people do not understand they fear. They did not understand my father's power and therefore feared him." Zahara replied, her voice still icy.

Jun shakes her head a moment and then turns to Zahara, "I am sorry, I had no idea..."

"I'm not the one you should apologise to, if you wish to make amends then do so with my brother, but do not tell him I showed you his past he would not want you feeling sorry him." Zahara replied in an acid voice.

"One thing I would like to ask," Anna began, "is where were you in all of this?"

"My father had sent me abroad to study and I did not know of his death until two weeks after his murder. I went home immediately hoping the story was false, but when I saw our home I had to accept otherwise, that was where I found Xephon; he had not moved from the spot where he had seen our mother die. He had almost starved himself to death by the time I had come home and it was a year before he would speak again."

An uneasy silence followed the story, no one was sure what to say.

Finally Tamao asked if anyone would like some tea and was greeted by a chorus of "Yes."

As Tamao left to make the drinks the rest of group started to make meaningless conversation. Jun however remained silent.

When Tamao returned with the drinks, there was a moment of silence as everyone took a sip.

"You know Zahara■ said Anna slowly, ⌠Your not quite what I expected. The way Xephon talked about you-"

"You thought I would be diabolically ruthless and act as if I owned your house?" Zahara cut in finishing Anna's sentence.

Anna shrugged her shoulders and replied, "Well yes actually."

"Well let's just say that in the years I've spent away from my dear brother I have matured slightly. I have found that while being cold and cruel may work a lot of the time it is sometimes far more effective to be kind and let a person's own guilt be their incentive, although now that I think about it, in a way that is also quite cruel..."

The girls slightly sweat dropped at that.

"But anyway, you are the one who told me where to find Xephon so I see no reason as to why I should be anything but kind to you. Though I expect that you will see a different side of me when I meet Xephon, I'm afraid theres practically the only way to talk to him." As Zahara finished speaking she placed her cup on the floor and turned so that she could face Anna more comfortably. "Now then,' she continued, "while we are on the subject, where is Xephon?"

"He left early this morning to go train." Anna told Zahara her voice emotionless.

"Did he say when he would be back?"

"No."

"Then I will assume he will back for dinner, he never stops for lunch anyway." once Zahara had said this she pulled a small black mobile phone from the pocket of her suit jacket and dialled a number, "Hello, can I speak to Dominic? Tell him its Zahara." There was a pause as the call was transferred and then Zahara started speaking again. "Hello Dom its Zahara, I was wondering if you still had a shop in Japan? You do? Great. Do you still make those weighted training coats I designed? Good, I would like you to make one for my brother, he will have grown slightly so make it larger than the first one...oh no not him, it's for Xephon."

Zahara continued to talk on the mobile for another 10 minutes before she finally finished ordering the new coat.

Everyone started to head downstairs to find some place more comfortable or to find something to do leaving Mia in her bed.

Mia had started to fall asleep from the sheer boredom of the conversations around her, she decided that she should get out of bed and try to get some fresh air. As she pushed the blankets away she realised that she wasn't wearing anything. She pulled the blankets back up hastily hoping no one had noticed.

"Where are my clothes?" she asked Tamao who was nearest to her. The pink haired girl turned and replied meekly "We sort of threw them out."

"What!" cried Mia outraged.

"Well they were covered in blood and we didn't think you would want to wear them again."

"But what am I supposed to wear?" Mia asked indignantly.

"Oh I'm sure you'll fit into some of Tamao's clothes, you seem to be about the same size," Anna said offhandedly, "you don't mind do you Tamao?" Anna asked the pink haired girl, but there was a tone in her voice that suggested that there would no argument at all.

"No Anna that's fine." Tamao replied timidly and hurried off to get some clothes.

When Tamao came back she was carrying an armful of clothes, which she dropped at the foot of the bed Mia was sleeping in. Mia sifted through the clothes and finally picked out a pair of black shorts and a green shirt with a red heart on the front.

Feeling slightly better now that she was dressed Mia made her way downstairs and looked for someone she could talk to. She had still had no idea where she was exactly and where the rest of her things were.

Walking around she found Jun In the kitchen making another pot of tea.

"Uh hi there." Mia said, Jun turned round and smiled when she saw Mia.

"Good your up, I was wandering how long you were to sleep. Do you want some tea?"

"Um no thanks." Mia replied, she hated the stuff and could never see how other people could drink it, she had a cup earlier because things were kind of awkward but hadn't drunk any of it. "Do you know where my weapons and stuff are?"

"I believe that Pilika had them so you will have to ask her."

"Which one's Pilika?" Mia asked confused.

"She's the blue haired Ainu, I think you'll find her outside in the garden."

"Oh, thanks." Mia walked off in search of Pilika and sure enough found her in the garden talking to Tamao.

"Um Pilika?" Mia ventured hoping that she had found the right person. Pilika turned and when she saw Mia smiled just like Jun.

"Oh hi, it's Mia isn't it? We were just talking about you." Pilika said in a cheery voice.

"Uh yeah, Jun said that you had my stuff..." Mia trailed off.

"What? Oh yeah Xephon gave them to me, wait just a minute."

Pilika got up and went to her room, leaving Mia with Tamao. They chatted for a few minutes and Mia learned there was a shopping mall in the town that was open 24/7. Just as she was about to ask Tamao about the various shops in the mall Pilika came back carrying Mia's black bag which had her deadly razor rings and her other belongings. As Mia went through the contents of the bag she realised that an important item was missing.

"Hey where's my memorial tablet?"

"What?" said Pilika who hadn't been listening.

"My memorial tablet, you know the thing a shaman puts his spirit in so that they can rest, it's not in my bag."

"Hey Tamao didn't you find a tablet?" Pilika started.

"Huh? Oh yeah, sorry." Replied Tamao as she fished in her pocket for the black oblong and handed it to Mia who clutched it to her chest, as she did so she sent a small pulse of Furyoku into the tablet and her guardian spirit, it was a women who appeared to be in her twenties and was wearing a red and blue striped leotard and had a carnival mask covering her face.

"Mia are you all right?" the spirit asked her voice full of concern "After the fight he locked me in there and-"

"Calm down Kyra I'm fine although I do have a bit of headache." Mia stopped talking and turned to Pilika and Tamao. ⌠Kyra this Pilika and Tamao they helped me out after the fight, Pilika, Tamao this Kyra my guardian spirit; she used to an acrobat in a famous circus."

The two girls greeted the spirit politely and made idle conversation for a time, then Mia told them that she was going to into town to buy some new clothes since she didn't seem to have any now.

As Mia got up she walked through the house looking for the front door, this place is bigger than it looks, she thought to herself. As she wandered around she started thinking back to her fight with Xephon. Now that it was over Xephon didn't seem nearly as strong, she had held her own for a while and even managed to get a good attack in.

"What are you thinking about?" Kyra asked casually.

"The fight." Mia replied absentmindedly.

"You're thinking we should have won." Kyra told her master.

Mia nodded absentmindedly again and Kyra continued ⌠Despite the fact that he was better than you.", Mia nodded again and walked on a few steps before Kyra's words sank in.

"Hey wait a minute.." Mia began angrily.

Kyra laughed at Mia reaction and replied, "Well it's the truth Mia, even I admit to it but that doesn't mean it has to stay true."

"What do you mean?" Mia said slowly.

"Think about it, at the moment he is stronger than us, but we still have time to become stronger than him. We won our other two preliminary matches so we still qualify for the second round of the tournament, which doesn't start for two more days. We probably won't have to fight him again until the third round of fights at the village, so we have time. We also have time to learn about any weaknesses he has."

"Huh what do you mean?" Mia asked surprised.

"I believe you told me that Xephon's sister was here somewhere, if anyone would know about Xephon's weaknesses it's her." Kyra replied with a smug grin on her face.

"Isn't that a bit like cheating though." said Mia uncertainly.

Kyra frowned "I suppose your right, still we could try and learn a little more about him."

"I think I already know enough." Mia replied suppressing a shiver.

Kyra looked puzzled for a moment and then Mia filled her in on what Zahara had shown her and the other girls.

"That's terrible, "Kyra said in horror "I can"t believe that people would do that."

"Well they did." Mia replied she was slightly pale from remembering what she had seen.

"Mia are you all right?" It was Zahara, she had just come out of the main sitting room and had a tea cup in her hand.

"Yeah I'm fine." Mia muttered although she did feel slightly dizzy.

"You look pale, when was the last time you ate anything?"

"Um.." Mia thought, it had almost been two days since she last had something to eat, "two days." she squeaked.

"I thought it was something like that, come on you need some food." without another word Zahara grasped Mia's arm and led back to the kitchen and proceeded to open the refrigerator and pull out various foods. "Now then what do you want eat, there's seem to be some chicken and some type of fish."

"I think I'll just make myself a sandwich." Mia answered.

"Ok but make sure you put a lot in it you need to eat.' Zahara told her sternly.

"Your worse than my mother.' Mia replied with a grin on her face.

"And your worse than my brother, at least he has the sense not to argue with me.' Zahara countered with a similar grin.

"Why? Was he scared of you?' Mia asked interestedly.

"He was to start off with," Zahara began "but then he got stronger and... had more of a certain attitude, I can still leave a mark on him though." She said with a slight smile.

"Really, how?" Mia asked, her voice anxious.

"Well my brother's main advantage is that he's fast, so if you manage to get a firm hold on him he won't be able to dodge your attacks. Although the problem with my brother is that it's difficult to get a good hold on because he can use his fast movement technique. Luckily however he can't use it repeatedly or he will get tired very quickly. Apart from that he seems to be rather strong so I suggest you use what I told you to your advantage the next time you fight him.■ Zahara finished that sentence with a wink and Mia blushed.

"I didn't mean to-" Mia began.

"Oh don't worry it's quite all right. Finding out your opponents weaknesses is an essential habit for any fighter, at least any fighter that wants to win." Zahara laughed as she said this, "Now then I think you wanted to head down to the shopping mall didn't you? I suggest you go while it's still light outside."

Mia nodded and left the kitchen and finally found the front door, she grabbed her bag and her shoes and headed outside.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Xephon was tired; he had been training nearly all day and hadn't eaten since breakfast. He would have stayed longer but the owner of the scrap yard had shown up an had been furious when he saw that all the metal had been reduced to confetti which he wouldn't be able to sell. So Xephon had been forced to leave and he decided that he would check up on Yoh and others at the graveyard but decided to stop off at Yoh's house first to get something to eat.

Xephon stepped inside through the open front door, 'Is it ever locked?' He thought to himself as walked down the hall towards the kitchen. But before he came to the kitchen he saw something that made him freeze; it was grey briefcase with a black handle.

"No." Xephon muttered to himself and he slowly started moving back towards the front door.

"Xephon! Where do you think you're going?" Zahara's cold voice echoed down the hall. Xephon stopped moving, there was no point trying leave now she'd seen him. Instead he turned to face her.

"What are you doing here Zahara?" he kept his voice emotionless as he spoke.

"What am I doing here? We haven't seen each other for over two years and that's the first thing you say to me?" Zahra said unforgivingly. "Not that it matters but Anna here (Zahara gestured to Anna who had appeared from main room) gave me a call and told me where to find you."

At this statement Xephon shot Anna a death glare, but Anna simply smiled.

"Don't glare at her like that Xephon, she didn't do anything wrong. In fact it seems to me that you are sorely in need of some more training."

"I don't need your help." Xephon stated simply.

"Oh no? It looks to me like you've gotten lazy, you're not even wearing the training coat I had made for you."

Xephon frowned as he said "Unfortunately there's not enough left of the coat to wear."

"You didn't even take good care of it!" Zahara cried in exasperation "Xephon how do you ever expect to win the Shaman tournament if you don"t train? It's a good thing that I came prepared, now put this on."

As Zahara finished speaking she held up a long grey coat that looked almost identical to the one Xephon had before. Without waiting for Xephon to respond she forced him into the coat. Zahara had been expecting Xephon to stagger under weight because she had increased from 180lbs. to 200lbs but Xephon didn't even falter, instead the faintest trace of a smile appeared on his lips.

"What are you so happy about?" Zahara snapped.

"Nothing, it's just that this coat is a bit light."

Zahara stared at him for a second before she started speaking, "Don't start acting all clever with me, if that's too light then I'll just have to make you do some extra work until I get a heavier one, now then..." a smile appeared on Zahara's lips and Xephon's almost-grin vanished almost instantly.

"I wonder, Xephon are you still running 7 miles everyday?"

Xephon didn't reply but he narrowed his eyes as he saw Zahara pull out the silver piccolo from her pocket. She began to play a forceful tune that reminded Anna of a thunderstorm. As Zahara played a bright light began to glow in front of her, after a few moments the light began to take shape and changed into a brilliant golden Lion with a pure white mane and bright yellow eyes. Zahara stopped playing and looked back to Xephon, her grin becoming wider as she spoke.

"Xephon, you remember Giftzahne don't you? I'm sure you do, he's gotten bored lately because he's had nothing to chase but I think you can fix that can't you? I'll give you to the count of five." As Zahara finished speaking she raised her left hand and began to count down on her fingers.

Xephon stayed where he was for a second before saying the following words.

"Sie waren hier nie gefragt Zahara."

Without another word Xephon turned and ran through the house and out the front the door. Zahara finished counting and the golden Lion charged through the corridor and out of the front door after Xephon.

What Xephon said will be revealed in next chapter, just to keep you waiting.


	11. Chapter 11

"What did Xephon just say?" Anna asked Zahara curiously.

"What? Oh well, he just said he didn't need the workout thats all." Zahara was smiling, but Anna could tell that Xephon had said something else.

Just then the front door opened again and Yoh and the other shaman walked in looking bewildered.

"Anna you're not going to believe what we just saw!" Yoh began.

"Yeah Xephon was being chased by this Huge Lion!" Horo cut in waving his arms around frantically as he described what he had just seen.

As Horo was talking Zahara took in each of the shaman analysing the way they walked and how they spoke, trying to get an idea of their personalities. As she was doing this her mobile started beeping and everyone turned to look at her, Zahara blushed slightly and apologised and then pulled out her phone to answer the call.

"Yes? This is her... this better be good I'm with company. What do you mean he's quitting? He can't quit he still has to finish the investment, I'll be there as soon as I can." Zahara finished speaking and put the mobile back in her bag and then turned to face the rest of the group.

"I'm sorry I have to go now something's come up." Zahara turned to Anna and continued speaking ⌠Thank you for inviting me, it was good to see Xephon again, if he ever gets out of hand just give me a call." As Zahara finished speaking she collected her briefcase and left the house at a quick jog.

"Who exactly was that?" Ren addressed his question to Jun.

"Her name is Zahara she's Xephon's sister."

At this statement the whole group turned round to watch the tall figure disappear around a corner. Then they started muttering to themselves.

"That's the evil older sister?"

"She doesn't seem any worse than Anna."

"She sounded more polite."

"She was pretty."

"I wonder why Xephon thought so badly of her?"

At this statement Pilika cut in, "Well if you remember back about five minutes I think you were telling us you saw a Lion." The group of Shamans nodded at this but still looked confused.

Pilika sighed and realised that she would have to spell things out for them, ⌠How often do you see a Lion in Japan?" she asked them. The shaman though about this for a while before they replied that you never see a Lion in Japan.

"Then where do you think this one came from?" Pilika asked trying to get them to come to the conclusion themselves. Still there was silence and eventually Anna snapped.

"Oh for heaven"s sake Yoh use your brain! You were telling me yesterday that Xephon said his sister use to have a Lion chase him and now when both Xephon's sister and a Lion show up you have no idea! You had better win the shaman tournament because if you don't you'll be too stupid to do anything else! As of tomorrow Yoh you will wear the weighted shoes and armbands all day and I'm increasing the weight of each armband and shoe to 50lbs."

"But Anna that means I'll be carrying 200lbs!" Yoh cried out in shock at the amount of work he was going to be forced to do.

"Well get used to the idea! Did you know that Xephon's coat weighs 200lbs and your going to have to face him sooner or later in the tournament so your going to start working to beat him right now!"

As Anna continued to bark orders to Yoh the others decided that they should try and get away very quietly before Anna noticed them as well.

-  
Xephon kept running, he didn't know how far or how long he had been running but all that mattered was that he stayed ahead of that damned pet his sister kept. Xephon eventually saw that he was coming up to the main part of town. He decided that it was probably a good thing that it was about midnight because he was sure that regular people weren't use to seeing Lions run down a main street after a teenager.

Xephon took a quick glance behind and noticed that Lion had disappeared. He stopped running and turned around fully making sure that he was right.

"Where the hell did it go? There's no way he would give up on me so easily."

"Master..." Weiss began staring behind Xephon his eyes widening.

"Not now Weiss I'm looking for my sisters stupid pet."

"Master I really think that you should-"

"Weiss what part of 'not now' did you not understand-!" Xephon stopped speaking as he felt warm breath on the back of his neck. Xephon didn't even turn round as he heard the following.

"Who are you calling a stupid pet, little brat?" Said a voice thick with a heavy german accent in its german words.

Xephon just sprinted as fast as he could down a side road to his left leaving Giftzahne behind and blinking for a few seconds before realising that his prey had gotten away, he roared and charged down same side road after Xephon.

Xephon was now running through the back alleys of town and the Lion was hot on his tail, Xephon was tired now, he wasn't sure how far he'd run but it was definitely more than 7 miles.

"Hey over here!"

Xephon looked up and saw Yoh waving at him from a side alley, without a moment hesitation Xephon dived in after Yoh as Giftzahne went charging past him.

Xephon just lay on the ground for a few seconds trying to catch his breath and then got back on his feet. He turned round to thank Yoh, then he realised that the figure in front of him was not the person he had come to know over the past few days. Although he looked identical to Yoh the stranger was wearing a grey poncho and brown trousers, he also had a dark aura surrounding him, which was far stronger than Yoh could ever hope have.

"You...are not Yoh." Xephon breathed out to the figure.

The brown haired boy in front of him laughed, "How perceptive of you, no I am not Yoh, my name is Hao, I suppose you could say I'm a relative of Yoh."

"Let me guess, you're the cliched evil twin?" Xephon asked darkly.

Hao smiled as he heard this, "Yes I suppose I am something like that."

"What do you want?" said Xephon with an edge to his voice.

"What makes you think I want something from you?" countered Hao.

"I really doubt that you called me over here just to talk." Xephon replied keeping the edge to his voice.

Hao smiled again at this statement before responding, "Very well, I do require something from you, I want you to join me and my followers so that I may become shaman king in the tournament."

Xephon merly stared at the Yoh look-alike.

"I would want to do this because..." Xephon let the words hang in the air.

"I can give you more power than you could ever dream of." responded Hao.

"I already have power, besides I was planning on winning the shaman tournament my self, I don't see why I should help the competition." said Xephon as he turned and started to walk back out of the alleyway. But before he had gone five paces was stopped by a towering wall of fire.

"I'm afraid I can't take no for an answer." Hao told the black haired shaman casually.

Xephon turned and stared at the Yoh look-alike in front of him, he was starting to get annoyed. "Drop the damn fire wall."

"Make me." Hao replied with a smirk. Xephon took six paces and then stood right in front Xephon and grasped the collar area of Hao's poncho and lifted him off the ground. Hao didn't struggle, he just laughed and the two of them vanished in a burst of flame.

-  
Mia was having the best time of her life; the shopping mall in the town was better than she could have dreamed possible, it had virtually every clothes shop known to man/woman. Not only that it had her favourite fast food places and it had a cinema, Mia was in heaven. She'd visited five of the shops and had bought as many clothes as she could afford, the problem now was she hardly had any money left and was looking for something to eat but most of the stuff was too expensive.

Mia stooped walking suddenly as she noticed one of the huge shops was having a special closing down sale the poster on top of it read '80 OFF ALL ITEMS! EVERYTHING MUST GO!'

The place was full of teenage girls all around Mia's age pushing and screaming as they tried to get the clothes they wanted. Without any hesitation Mia charged in, she'd had experience in these type of matters; the trick was to be as ruthless as possible, don't let anyone get in your way and don't let yourself get distracted.

Despite Mia's small size she managed to shove her way through to where the clothes were on display and grabbed whatever she could find; she could look at them later first she had to get them. Abruptly she reached for a low cut black short sleeve shirt that had a silver lighting bolt on the front, as she did so another pair of hands grabbed the shirt as well. Instinctively Mia started tugging on the shirt hoping to pull it out of the other girl's hands, but to no success. Mia glanced over to see who the hands belonged to and saw a girl that looked slightly younger she was. The girl had red hair which was done up into two pigtails and had earrings designed to look like skulls.

The two girls stopped struggling for a minute and glared at each other.

"Let go it's mine!" Mia told the newcomer.

"No it's not!" replied the new girl.

"Yes it is!" Mia answered defiantly.

"I don't see your name on it!"

The two started struggling again for possession of the shirt and eventually the shirt ripped in half. Both girls stared at the shirt for a moment then at each and laughed.

Both girls managed to grab some clothes and then escape the shop without being trampled by the other customers.

They headed down towards the restaurants and fast food places and Mia started talking to the red head and learned that she was a shaman as well, she had just asked the red haired girl her name but before the girl could respond, two more girls came round the corner and started talking to the red head.

"Where has Macchi been?" asked a slim blond haired girl, she had a bored look in her eyes and was carrying some type of doll.

"Yeah Macchi where were you? I've been looking everywhere for you. Hao found what he wanted so we have to go meet up with him" The girl who said this was taller than the other two and had long blue hair that went down to her waist.

"Aww have we got to leave now Kanna? There are some really cool stores here besides we never get a chance to go shopping." Macchi asked the tall blue haired girl.

"Are you arguing with me Macchi?" Kanna asked the younger girl, as she said this Mia noticed a spirit that looked like a suit of armour hover above the blue haired girls head and look threateningly down at Macchi.

"You're a shaman!" Mia blurted out loudly. Several turned towards Mia to see why she was making so much noise and the girl named Kanna scowled at her as if seeing her for the first time.

"Who are you?" Kanna asked while glaring at Mia.

"Her names Mia." cut in Macchi hurriedly "We met in one the shops and I was sort of hoping that she could come with us." Macchi gave Kanna a pleading look.

Kanna shook her head at this and replied, ⌠No way Macchi, Hao's the one who picks who gets to join. Anyway I seriously doubt he'd be interested in her, I mean come on she's a weakling." Kanna pulled a cigarette out of her pocket and lit it, ignoring the glare she was getting from Mia.

"I'm no weakling!" Mia shouted in outrage, "Come on! I'll take you on right here!"

Kanna shook her head at this and looked at Mia with a faintly amused expression on her face, "You got guts kid I'll give you that, all right you can follow us but Hao still has the final word and he's not the generous type most of the time."

-  
Xephon stumbled forward and then straighten up. Where the hell was he? A second ago he'd been in the middle of a town, now he appeared to be in some sort of grassy valley; there were no houses or buildings anywhere that he could see, the place seemed totally untouched by civilization.

"This is an interesting trinket."

Xephon turned round to see who had spoken and saw Hao a few feet away from him looking at something in his hands; it was a silver ring with a red wite jewel with a black onyx in the center.

Xephon looked down at his ring finger quickly, his amulet was gone!

"Give that back." Xephon threatened quietly.

Hao looked up apparently surprised "Oh have I made you angry?"

"Give it back." Xephon repeated and grasped the hilt of Eroberung.

"Are you going to fight me for it?" Hao said with a laugh, "All right then how about this then; if you beat me I'll give you your little trinket, but if I win you join me." As Hao said he tossed the ring to a smaller figure Xephon hadn't noticed. "Opacho will look after it while we fight and give it to the winner, now then do you agree to my terms?"

"No deal." Xephon muttered quietly, "I'm just going to kick you and your little friend's ass then take my amulet back."

Hao frowned at this but didn't have a chance to reply because Xephon chose that moment to attack.

"Teufel Abend."

Hao sighed as he saw the feathers of black light hurtle towards him and diverted them with a wave of his hand.

"I'm afraid you'll have to do better than that, especially if you want to beat me." as Hao finished speaking the ground between Hao and Xephon rumbled and split open, a geyser of lava erupted from the fissure and the Spirit Of Fire (SOF) rose slowly from the opening. When it stopped Hao leapt nimbly onto it's shoulder and looked down at Xephon, "Come on then what are you waiting for?"

Xephon looked up at the giant spirit in front of him and sensed the amount of power it had.

'Shit.' he thought. He raised his head to look at Hao and said in what he hoped was an unimpressed voice,

"Never heard of the phrase 'size doesn't matter' obviously. Its quality over quantity my friend."

"I think you find that I have both." Hao replied, he nodded his head and SOF left arm surged towards Xephon, who swerved to his left and brought his blade down on the spirits arm. The blade bounced off without doing any damage.

⌠Okay this is not good. Weiss, any advice would be welcome."

⌠Try using a different blade, you are fighting a spirit not a human."

Xephon shined his almost-grin and slammed his blade into the ground.

"Schwarzes Ritter Schwert." Xephon's blade detached from the hilt and formed a red blade of light from the hilt.

"Alber." Xephon held his sword pointing forward and to the ground. He then gestured for Hao to attack again.

Hao looked quizzically at Xephon for a moment, "I don't see why your getting so cocky, you haven't got a chance." The SOF right arm surged forward, Xephon stood his ground this time and at the last second pivoted on his right foot so that the spirits arm crashed into the ground right next to him, he brought his weapon down with all his force and the blade cut cleanly through the SOF arm leaving it lying on the ground. Xephon looked back Hao.

"You were saying?"

Hao looked mildly interested at this twist of invents, "Well done, even the X-laws would have a problem doing that, however," Hao snapped his fingers and the SOF arm reappeared in a burst of flame, "you still haven't got a chance." Hao told him with a smirk.

Xephon scowled at this but was unable to reply because the SOF started attacking and he was forced to concentrate on evading its attacks.

"Any more bright ideas Weiss?"

"You can't beat the spirit it's too strong, go directly for the source of its power."

"You want me to attack the shaman? Wouldn't that be what you call dishonourable?" Xephon answered with a tone of surprise.

"You haven't got a choice right now, besides I'm a bird. What do I know of honor?"

"Well said." Xephon looked up at Hao and realised he was too far away to attack.

'I'll just have to do something about then.' Xephon waited for the SOF to attack again and swerved to his right letting the spirits arm crash into the ground beside him again, this time though Xephon jumped onto the spirits hand and started sprinting up it's arm towards Hao.

Hao looked slightly surprised at this course of action but made no attempt to stop Xephon as he ran towards him. Just before Xephon reached Hao the black haired shaman leapt into the air.

"Scheitelhau!" Above Hao's head, Xephon brought his sword crashing down in a vertical decending slash; clearly attempting to slice his opponent in two.

Hao simply raised his arm and caught the red blade single handed with no apparent effort. Xephon's eyes widened in surprise, "Impossible."

"I think you'll find that word does not apply to me." Hao told the cold eyed shaman in front of him who was struggling to free his weapon from Hao's grasp. Hao chuckled to himself and raised his other hand and placed it on Xephon's chest and summoned a fireball, which sent Xephon flying through the air before he eventually landed on the ground creating a huge creator.

Hao jumped off the SOF shoulder and walked over to the still smoking creator. He cleared the smoke with a gesture of his hand and frowned as he saw that the creator contained only Xephon's weighted training coat.

At that moment Hao felt a cold breeze blow past him and smiled. Hao quickly turned round to see Xephon appear in front of him with a scowl on his face; his clothes and hair singed from the force of the fireball.

"You're still standing, that is impressive." Hao told Xephon offering a smile.

Xephon's scowl grew deeper and he reattached his sword's blade. Xephon raised his sword and pointed it at Hao with the flat of the blade pointed up.

"Tote Welt, Schwarzer Sarg!" Weiss's head on the hilt grew wings that spread out to reach out and wrap around Hao into the shape of a Sphere. Hao felt the energy coursing through him but it gave him no pain.

"Ekli-!"

Xephon was interrupted as Hao snapped his fingers from the inside and instantly the black orb shattered into a million pieces which slowly dissolved into nothing.

"Not bad but I've seen better." Hao told Xephon casually, he raised his right hand and summoned another fire ball, Xephon narrowed his eyes and swerved to his left barley evading the hot molten mass.

Hao raised an eyebrow at this. "So your faster without your coat, but how fast exactly?" Hao summoned another fireball, again Xephon evaded it and then turned to face Hao.

⌠I'm more than fast enough for you." he said.

Hao raised his other eyebrow at this and replied, "Really, you think so? We'll just have to test that then." Hao summoned another fireball but it was ten times larger than the others, abruptly it split into four more fireballs and those four split to make sixteen. The fires kept spreading until there were well over 60 fireballs facing Xephon. Hao allowed himself a small smirk at the look on Xephon's face, it was priceless. "I suggest that you start running." Hao advised the other shaman but Xephon simply stood his ground and raised his sword.

"Ochs." Xephon said as he held his sword up with the blade next to his head and pointing forward.

Hao shrugged "It's your funeral." and he launched all of his fireballs at once.

"Krumphau!" Xephon's arm moved in blurs moving left to right to left again, cutting most of the molten orbs. But there were too many and eventually he was thrown backwards by the force of the fireballs.

Hao smiled as he saw the shaman lying on the floor unconscious, he was about to order the SOF to pick him up when somehow Xephon struggled to his feet and raised his sword again.

Hao sighed, "Why don't you just give up? I've already told you you don't stand a chance. I've seen all your attacks before, they're not going to work against me so there's no point in you fighting, you've already lost."

When Xephon heard this he laughed cruelly, "You think you've seen everything I can do? Your not even close, you may be stronger than me but that doesn't make you invincible.... Hochste Kurzung....."

Xephon raised his sword strait into the air. From the blade's hilt Weiss grew up and out to the size were his wing grew out to at least the size of the SOF's arm. He then decended back into the sword were his wings grew to become a large black blade with the feathers turning into dagger like blades making two serrated edges.

"I've been working on a technique for someone just like you, it will destroy you."

Hao looked incredibly amused at this. "You really think so? Well than lets see this new attack of yours, tell you what I won't even move." as Hao finished speaking he raised both his arms leaving himself completely defenceless.

Xephon scowled and surged towards Hao his new blade raised.

"ZORNHAU!!!"

As Xephon said the word, he vanished and reappeared behind Hao.

"What the-"

Before Hao could finished his sentence, a sound resembleing a gun with a silencerwas heard and the ground under him split open as if something had cut it open. Afterwards, Hao's body started to turn black. When his entire body was completely covered, he seemed to explode outward into a tornado of black wind and feathers. The top of the tornado curved and bagan to take form as Weiss as he flew towards Xephon who had his blade out.

After Weiss re-connected to the sword, Xephon turned around to show his face was pale and he gasping for breath. He staggered forward and looked for Opacho, seeing him he slowly made his way over and held out his arm and at the same time panted "Give me my ring."

"No." Opacho replied in a defiant tone.

Xephon scowled as he looked at the young child in front of him, if that last attack hadn't completely wiped him out he wouldn't even have asked, he would have just knocked the kid out and taken it back, but at the moment he was having enough trouble just standing up.

"You heard your master, he said that if I beat him you were to give me my ring." Xephon panted angrily.

Opacho laughed at this and then told Xephon "Stranger is much mistaken if he believes that pitiful attack defeated master Hao."

"Quite right Opacho." said a sinister voice right behind Xephon, before he could turn round he was struck in back and was sent flying through the air before crashing back down to earth. He got up slowly using his weapon for support; he was having problems breathing now, his breathing was raspy and came in short bursts, he started coughing and saw that he was coughing up blood, that meant that at least one of his ribs had pierced his lungs. Haru managed to turn round and saw Hao walking towards him with a frown on his face, there was a single but long cut on his chest which was bleeding freely, apart from that the boy seemed unharmed.

"But I will hand it to you, that attack was something. You surrounded the real blade with your oversoul in the shape of another blade. With your speed you wounded me physically and then your oversoul blade attacked my spirit and infested it. Your spirit ally attacked my spirit directly, then spread out from my body with the furyoku you used to make it to kill my body. Very clever."

Xephon looked wide eyes at Hao.

"Thats some spirit you have, and your skills in german fencing are well beyond average. But you should really learn to stay down." Hao told Xephon darkly and he snapped his fingers. A large shadow appeared behind Xephon and he looked up to see the SOF towering over him. The last thing Xephon saw was it's giant fist hurtling towards him.

Alber-Fool's Guard

Scheitelhau-Scalp Cut

Ochs-Ox

Krumphau-Crooked Cut

Hochste Kurzung-Master Cut

Zornhau-Wrath Cut

Sie waren hier nie gefragt Zahara-You were never needed here Zahara.


	12. Chapter 12

Opacho watched as the Spirit Of Fire (SOF) fist pummelled Xephon into the ground and winced as he heard at least three bones snap from the force of the impact. As the world returned to the city landscape around them, Opacho turned to look at his master and saw that he still had the same dark expression on his face, this made Opacho uneasy because he had never seen Hao angry, it was slightly unsettling.

"Why is Hao angry?" the young child asked.

Hao didn't answer for a moment and Opacho had to repeat his question before Hao responded.

"Don't worry Opacho I'm not angry, merely aggravated, however..." Hao's face relaxed into an easy grin that was strangely similar to Yoh's " I have what I came for and that is what matters, Opacho would you go and pick up his coat and weapon, I shall want to examine them later. Now then where are the Hanagumi?"

Almost as soon as Hao said this he heard arguing from the ridge above him and sighed, "Will those girls ever get along? Oh well, come along Opacho it seems as though I shall have to break up yet another one of their fights." Hao jumped back onto the SOF shoulder and was followed immediately by Opacho who was struggling somewhat with the heavy coat, the SOF began to rise towards the ledge where the Hanagumi were arguing before Opacho coughed slightly and said,

"Master has forgotten something."

Hao turned to look at his little companion and saw him indicating to a large crater.

"Hmm what? Oh yes, we wouldn't want to leave behind our new guest would we? SOF pick him up, he seems slightly incapable right now."

The SOF bent down and picked up the unconscious shaman, whose head hung limply on his shoulders causing his hair to cover the front of his face.

"Now then I assume we have everything yes?" Hao looked towards Opacho as he said this and the child offered no complaint. "Good let us continue then."

They then dissapeared in a burst of fire.

-

The Hanagumi plus Mia had been wandering around in the city for about an hour and a half. Kanna had been leading them with the map in front of her face for nearly the entire journey and kept yelling at people to shut up so she could read the 'Completely Pointless and Bloody Stupid Map.'

Kanna's behaviour was really starting to get Mia's nerves and she was wondering how Macchi and Mari could stand her, they just kept plodding along behind the taller blue haired girl and talking to each other, only reverting to whispers when Kanna yelled at them. Mia checked her watch and saw that they had been lost for nearly two hours now and it was getting dark and Mia did not want to camp out here tonight. Mia decided she would try reading the map for once after all it can't be that hard can it? Mia thought to herself and she walked right up behind Kanna and peered round her shoulder to look at the map and saw that Kanna was holding it upside down.

"Um Kanna, do you know how to read a map?" Mia ventured quietly.

The blue haired Kanna whirled round to face Mia with a look of fury on her face, "Of course I know how to read map." she snarled.

"Then why are you holding it upside down?" Mia asked trying hard not to grin.

Kanna blushed slightly at this but her look of fury remained, "Well if you think it's so easy you can do it then!" and Kanna threw the map and small brown haired girl who caught it with ease. Mia laid the map on the ground and took a good look around her and then at the map again. She groaned as she realised that they were 10 miles from where they were supposed to be and that it would take them the rest of what was left of the day to get there. Mia pointed this out to the Hanagumi and suggested that they go back to the town and stay at hotel instead of looking for this 'Hao' guy. but the other three girls would have none of it and they adamantly refused to even consider turning round.

"Master Hao told Hanagumi to meet him in valley so Hanagumi will meet Hao in valley."

"Yeah, we can't turn our back's on Hao!" Macchi piped in.

"Not if you want to live anyway." Kanna added darkly.

Mia looked at Kanna for a minute to determine if she joking but she remained straight faced and this worried Mia slightly; she had no idea who this Hao was, she just decided to tag along with these three because it had seemed like fun at the time, but now she wasn't so sure.

"What's so great about Hao anyway?" Mia asked casually, she regretted asking almost instantly because of the uneasy silence that followed her question; it was as though she had just crossed some sacred line.

Finally Kanna pulled out a cigarette, lit it and then replied, "We owe Hao our lives, without him none of us would be here today."

"Oh." Mia couldn't think of anything else to say and she looked down at the map again and the uneasy silence continued.

"Does Mia know how to reach master Hao?" Mari asked. Mia blinked and was tongue tied for a second before she could answer "Wha? Oh yeah, we just head down here and we should come to the valley."

The group started walking again and after a few more minutes they were arguing again as though nothing had happened although now it was because it was getting too dark to see where they were going and they kept bumping into each other.

-

Hao rose up from the valley on the SOF shoulder with Opacho right alongside him and Xephon clutched in the giant spirits hand as they focused in on the angry cries that were coming from the valley ridge and Hao was quite amused by what he saw; it was pitch black but Hao had perfect night vision and had therefore had no problem seeing what was going on around him, you pick up those kind of skills when your over a thousand years old. The Hanagumi however were not so lucky and they continually bumped into each other and other things on the trail as they tried to make their down. Hao watched this for a few minutes before he noticed that there was someone else with Hanagumi. It was a girl who seemed to be the same age as Macchi and Mari although she was slightly smaller than them and she was vainly trying to read the map in front of her by pushing it as close to her face as possible. The girl looked oddly familiar but Hao couldn't seem to place her.

"Opacho do you recognise that girl down there with the Hanagumi?"

Opacho squinted into the darkness and tried his best to make something out of the gloom but all he saw was shadows, "Sorry Master, Opacho cannot see it is too dark."

"Hmm what? Oh I can do something about that." Hao said genially and he summoned a huge fireball which illuminated the whole area. This caused the Hanagumi to look up and start waving at Hao and Opacho to gain their attention.

"That girl down there Opacho, the one with the map." Hao indicated with a nod of his head. Opacho squinted again at the girl but finally shook his head and replied, "Opacho does not recognise strange girl."

"Oh well I suppose we shall just have to find out." Hao then manoeuvred the SOF toward the four girl's on the ridge who backed away quickly to make room for the giant spirit.

"You are late." Hao told the girls in a stern tone.

"Its not my fault, Kanna's the one who got us lost." Macchi pouted as she said this.

"Hey don't blame me! That map was defective no one would be able to read it" Kanna replied defiantly

"Mia was able to read it." Mari remarked with the same bored look in her eyes.

For the first time Hao focused on Mia and took in the girl in front of him; she was possibly slightly older than him but she was also shorter than he was. She had long brown hair that was done into a ponytail that reached just below her shoulders and her eyes were a bright green. Hao also noticed that Mia was staring back at him with a blank expression on her face, Hao treated her to his million dollar smile which caused her blush and look away quickly.

"Ah yes we appear to have a picked up a stray shaman, Macchi is this your handiwork again?" Hao directed his question to the red headed.

"Uh well you see.." Macchi began but Hao waved her into silence.

"Macchi I have already added one new member to our group tonight I see no reason why I should add a second."

"What are you talking about Hao?" Kanna asked bluntly.

"If you will draw your attention to the figure down here." Hao indicated to the SOF left arm and all four girls looked own at the unconscious Xephon whose head still hung limply forwards. Hao noticed this and frowned, "Well that's no good, SOF would you be so kind as to pick our friends head up so we can see him." the SOF shook its arm causing Xephon's head to roll backwards and reveal his face.

"Now then allow me to introduce you to-" Hao began but was suddenly cut off by Mia's outburst of,

"Xephon?!"

Hao instead of looking annoyed as he should have done, appeared interested by Mia's outburst. "You know him?" he asked Mia cheerfully.

Mia nodded and replied, "Yeah I've fought him twice and I've met his sister, did you beat him up?" She asked in an amazed voice. Hao smiled at this question and simply nodded his head.

"Wow, you must be really super-ultra strong to beat him!" as Mia said this Macchi and Mari started giggling and a wry smile made it's way onto Kanna's face.

Mia turned round to face them "Hey what's so funny?"

"Oh nothing." Macchi managed to say in between giggles.

Hao coughed slightly and the girl's turned back to look at him, Hao waited for a few seconds before he started talking to make sure he had their full attention, "Well if you girls have finished gossiping I believe I was questioning our newest member."

Kanna who was slightly quicker on the uptake then the other girls noticed the 'newest member' part and asked quickly, "Does that mean she stays?"

"Yes she can stay if she wants." As soon as Hao finished speaking Macchi ran up and hugged Mia and started telling her in an excited voice about all the fun stuff they were going to have.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Xephon groaned and woke up, he regretted doing so almost instantly because of the amount of pain his body was sending him; his head felt like someone had just taken a sledgehammer to it, he couldn't move his left arm which normally isn't a good sign, his right shoulder hurt like hell and something was restricting his breathing.

"Ah good I think he's waking up at last, Opacho would you go inform Hao."

Xephon heard someone get up and open then close a door, he kept listening and heard the faint sound someone breathing a little way away from him, he scanned this person with his shaman senses and could tell immediately that the person was strong but that was about it. Xephon decided against opening his eyes in the hope that this person would think he was asleep and leave.

"There's no point pretending, I can tell your awake." the voice responded as if reading Xephon's thoughts, so much for that idea then. Xephon opened his eyes and looked around, he seemed to be in a hotel room; he could see the tiny TV placed in a corner of the room, there was a balcony leading off to his left and on his right was phone with a card next to it which listed the speed dial numbers, one of which was 'Room Service.' Xephon sat up and looked around again to see where the voice had come from.

"Over here." Xephon looked round and saw a man in another corner of the room; he was dressed in some type black robe like a priest he also had a black hat with a white band on it, he looked to be either in his late thirties or early forty's and he was reading a black book, Xephon craned his neck to see the front cover but both covers were blank.

"I would advise against moving, you are seriously injured." The man remarked to Xephon as he began to get out of bed. The remark caused Xephon to pause and take a personal inventory; there was a thick white bandage around his forehead, his left arm was in a splint which explained why he couldn't move it, his chest was also bandaged but a little to tightly which was why he was having problems breathing, his right shoulder wasn't bandaged though and it still hurt like hell. Xephon tried to move his right arm but got a stab of pain form his right shoulder.

"I told you not move." The man remarked casually leafing through his book

"No you advised me not to move, and having taken your advice under consideration I have decided against it." Xephon told the man as he sat up on the bed, his body protested at this course of action but he overruled it.

The man looked up at Xephon and seemed surprised that he was up, "Very well I'm telling you not to move."

"And you would be?" Xephon left the question hanging in the air and he tried to stand up but lost his balance and fell back onto the bed.

The man shook his head and sighed, "My name is Luca and I'm the one whose responsible for you even being able to stand up right now, do you know you nearly died of blood loss because three of your ribs had punctured your lungs? Not to mention the fact that your left arm was broken in several places and your skull was fractured.'

"You forgot to mention the fact that my right shoulder is dislocated." Xephon mentioned casually.

Luca glanced at him for a second before replying "No it isn't."

"I think if anyone should know it would be me." Xephon told Luca, "Unless you can come up with another reason for why I can't move my arm."

Luca frowned for a moment and then put his book down and walked over to Xephon and began probing his right shoulder, Xephon winced as his fingers hit the dislodged muscle and bone. "It would seem that you were correct, now hold still a moment."

Without further warning the man grasped Xephon's shoulder and popped it back into place. Xephon gritted his teeth but didn't make a sound. Luca stepped and watched as Xephon flexed his arm a few times to get the muscles moving again, Xephon turned toward the man and said "Thank you."

Luca smiled at this, "Well at least you know how to be polite, unlike most of the kids your age."

"Tell me how did I get here and where are my possessions?" Xephon asked Luca.

Before Luca could respond the door to the room opened and Hao walked in followed closely by Opacho, "Ah good he's awake," Hao grinned as he saw Xephon's expression darken, "and I see he remembers me."

Xephon didn't bother to reply but he kept his gaze fixed on the younger shaman. Hao waved his arm towards the door and said "Thank you Luca but if you would please wait outside I would like to have my conversation in private." Luca nodded his head and collected his book and left the room closely followed by Opacho.

Hao stared at Xephon for a few minutes but when the black haired shaman refused to talk Hao initiated the conversation himself, "You know I was surprised to learn how much we have in common." Xephon's expression didn't change although he did raise one eyebrow slightly and Hao continued, "Yes you see people feared me for my power as well, they tried to kill me but when they could not they decided to murder my family instead...tell me, how old were you when your father was killed?"

Xephon blinked in surprise at the question, "How-"

"How do I know about your past? Well let's just say I have my sources, I have told no one else about your past so you don't need to worry about that. Now then would you answer my question, how old were you?" Hao said, his voice had taken on a more sombre tone.

Xephon was silent for moment but he eventually replied "Five."

"And after having watched your parents die you felt no anger? No hatred? No sense of revenge?" as Hao finished speaking he noticed that Xephon's eyes gleamed with malice and that both his fists were clenched, Hao smiled as he realised that he was making progress.

"When we last met I asked you to join me in return for power and you refused, this time I have a new offer; If you join me and I succeed in becoming Shaman King, then I will tell you who ordered your parents death and I will tell you where to find them. In short my friend I am offering you revenge. So will you join me?"

Xephon was silent for a time before he finally responded, ⌠How do I know I can trust you?"

Hao was thoughtful for a moment and then said, "I give you my word that you can trust me."

"Not good enough."

Hao smiled at this before he responded, "Are you suggesting that I would break my word?"

"Yes."

Hao laughed at the blacked haired shamans straight-faced expression, "You know if almost any of my other followers said that I would turn them to ash."

Xephon's reply to this was the following.

"As if I'd let you when I still have a goal to acheive in my life yet."

Hao frowned at this response before saying, "Very well as a gesture of good faith..." Hao extended his right hand towards Xephon and it emitted a bright flash of white light, which dazzled Xephon for a few seconds, when his vision cleared Xephon realised that the pain from his arm and head were gone and that his left arm was no longer in a splint, "there I think you will find that you are able to move more freely now."

Xephon stood up and flexed both arms and cracked his neck a few times before he turned back to face Hao, his expression was still blank. Hao rolled his eyes and reached into his pocket and pulled out Xephon's Ring and tossed it to him. Xephon's arm instantly snaked out and snatched it out of the air and he placed it on his right hand's ring finger.

"There now, I haven given you back your health and your amulet, if that is not reason enough to trust me then what is?"

"Where is Weiss?"

"Do you accept my offer?" Hao countered.

Xephon nodded his head slightly, "Yes, for now."

Hao smiled at the response and got up and started for the door but paused as Xephon asked, "What about Weiss?"

"Both your spirit and your weapon are in my possession, they shall be returned to you when I deem fit." Hao said with a smug look.

"I have already said that I trust you and I have accepted your offer, what do gain by keeping Weiss and the Eroberung?"

Hao laughed at this and replied, "It's not about what I gain, it's what I keep. You see while you say that you trust me and you have accepted my offer that does mean I trust you. So as long as I have your spirit and your weapon I know that you will not go back on your promise, so I suppose I gain obedience, now then have a good day." as Hao finished speaking he vanished in a column of fire leaving Xephon glaring at the spot where he had been standing.

"I want to kick his scrawny ass so bad."


	13. Chapter 13

Xephon glared at the spot where Hao had been standing.

"I want to kick his scrawny ass so bad. He's starting to piss me off."

Xephon sighed and made his way back to bed and sat down and tried to think about what he could do. Hao's offer of revenging his parents was tempting but he didn't like the idea of being powerless because he no longer had a weapon or a spirit. Well, not quite powerless Xephon thought with a wry grin as he fingered the ring Hao had returned. He couldn't leave because that would mean leaving Weiss, equally he couldn't beat the crap out of Hao and make him relinquish Weiss because he wasn't strong enough, not yet anyway. So at the moment there was nothing he could do about his situation, he would just have to go along with whatever Hao had planned.

At that moment the door to Xephon's room opened and Luca stepped back in, he scanned the room quickly and when he didn't see Hao asked Xephon, "Has he left?"

Xephon nodded then lay down on the bed; for some reason he felt tired but he couldn't figure out why.

"Well I see Hao at least undid the damage he created." Luca observed as he saw that Xephon no longer had any wounds, "There's no point in you just lying there, you may as well get up and walk around. I would introduce you to everyone but I have some matters to look into. We've rented out the entire hotel so anyone you see should be part of the group, you should go and look for Opacho." Seeing Xephon's blank face Luca added, "He's the small African child you saw come in with Hao, he gets along with everybody so he should be able to introduce you, there are some clothes and things in the closet over there." Luca nodded his head to Xephon and left.

Xephon stayed on the bed for a few minutes and then abruptly swung his legs over the side and got up. He made his way over to the sink and filled it to the brim with ice-cold water and then dunked his head in it to try and wake himself up, it seemed to work so he grabbed a towel and started drying his hair as he made his way to the closet that Luca had indicated to earlier. After sifting through the clothes there he finally selected a clean pair of blue jeans along with a black T-shirt that had picture of a shark on the back underneath the words 'Bite Me' he pulled on some socks and found his trainers in the lower compartment of the closet but he couldn't find his coat anywhere, he shrugged and left his room.

-  
"Come on I thought you wanted to get stronger?" Kanna taunted Mia as she collapsed on the ground from exhaustion, "You telling me that's the best you got? How the hell did you make it past the preliminary's?"

Mia scowled and pushed herself up onto her feet, ever since she had joined Hao and told him she wanted to get strong enough to beat Xephon it had been non stop training every morning from either Kanna or Peyote and Mia had come to despise them both.

Peyote constantly beat her into the ground because Hao had told him to work on her endurance. At first Mia had done quite well against one of Peyote's little skeletal minions but then he had two them of them gang up on her and she had found herself getting hit from behind every time she started an attack, Mia had complained that this was unfair and in response Peyote had added another of his skeletal dolls into the training until Mia was spending more time flat on her face then on her feet, she'd since learned to keep her mouth shut.

Kanna was no better, she would have Mia run 10 mile laps everyday no matter where they were staying; this apparently was to improve her stamina and her speed because whenever Mia started to slow down Kanna would have Ashcroft (her guardian spirit) hit her with his spear until she started sprinted full speed again. There was also the fact that Hao had replaced her lightweight aluminium razor ring with a steel one of the same size but filled with lead so that it was twenty times heavier than she was used to.

"Come on get up, how do you expect to get better with that lazy attitude, Ashcroft get her moving." Kanna barked to her guardian spirit who picked up his spear whacked it across Mia's back with a resounding 'Thud' which sent her sprawling across the ground, angrily Mia pushed herself back onto her feet and started running again, a cold determination in her eyes as she pushed herself on. She finally made it back to the hotel and Kanna eased up, "That's enough for today, although you barely did any work we've run out time, so I suggest you get some real food not the fast food crap, you need to build some muscle." with that inspirational message Kanna turned on her heel and walked off to her room, leaving Mia to collapse on one of the seats in the hotel lobby. Mia took a deep breath and released spirit control and Kyra appeared in front of her.

"Are you all right?" she asked worriedly.

Mia just nodded her head; she was too exhausted to say anything.

At this point Bill walked round the corner and saw Mia. Bill was well over six foot tall and was wearing his usual American football uniform with the spiked shoulder pads and red helmet that covered most of his face, he had the potential to be really intimidating; he looked like the type of guy who would have fun picking on someone when they were down. However his personality was the complete opposite; he couldn't stand to see other people being picked on and always tried to help others when he could as long as it didn't get in the way of Hao's plans, he also had a great sense of humour and just by hanging around he had the ability to cheer people up when they were depressed.

"You all right kid?" Bill said as he made his way over and sat down on one of the seats that groaned threateningly but managed to stay in one piece.

Mia nodded her head again, she usually hated it when people called her 'kid' but right now she was too tired to be angry.

"Well at least your getting a good workout, I'll have to tell Kanna and Peyote to keep doing whatever it is they're doing." Bill remarked as he leaned back in his chair which groaned even more threateningly. Mia's head came up as Bill finished speaking and she glared at him with all her might because she still didn't have enough strength to speak. Bill raised his hands defensively and said, ⌠Hey don't blame me you're the one who-"

SNAP!

The chair that Bill had been sitting had finally collapsed under the weight of the 6foot plus jock and he fell unceremoniously on his back.

"God damn it." Bill shouted as fell over and then struggled to get back up. Mia finally found her voice and started to laugh.

"Well I'm glad you found it funny." Bill grumbled, "I mean why the hell has every thing got to be god damn small."

"They aren't too small, you're too big." Macchi said with a giggle as she appeared round another corner of the hotel bearing two ice creams, one of which she handed to Mia and the other she kept for herself.

"Thanks." Mia said feebly.

"Don't I get an ice cream?" Bill asked in mock dejection.

"Hey I've only got two hands, anyway you can get one yourself." Macchi said as she stuck out her tongue out at Bill.

"Well I can tell when I'm not wanted." Bill mumbled as he walked off slowly, just before he went around the corner he turned to face Mia again, "Keep up the good work kid, it'll pay off later trust me."

Mia was too busy eating her ice cream to reply, so Bill just shook his head and walked round the corner. Mia finished eating her ice cream and leaned back in her chair and let out a sigh of contentment.

"I thought that would make you feel better." Macchi said with a grin as she finished her own ice cream, "Now come on there's loads of stuff to do here and I don't know how long Hao's gonna let us stay."

Mia nodded in agreement; she had been with Hao for two weeks and almost everyday Hao had made them make camp in the middle of a field or something instead of letting them stay in a nice warm hotel, this was apparently to let the shaman become closer to nature but Mia personally though it was because Hao was a cheapskate, although today she had been forced to reconsider this because Hao had booked the entire hotel for them so that there were only shaman in the building and the hotel staff.

"Let's go find Mari." Macchi suggested as she grabbed Mia's hand and dragged her off before waiting for Mia to reply, "I think she was over by the pool, come on." and without further ado Macchi proceeded to drag Mia all around the hotel looking for the blond haired doll master.

-  
The hotel was larger than Xephon expected; it had four floors and in the centre of the building was a fountain of some sort and all the rooms were situated around it. Xephon made his way down slowly so that he could examine the entire building which appeared to be empty. He couldn't see any signs of life anywhere, puzzled he walked down a corridor to his left and came to a set of double doors underneath the sign 'BAR.' Xephon walked straight in and looked around; it appeared to be empty except for the hotel employee behind the bar, he turned around and was about to leave when his shaman sense picked up a trace of Furyoku. Xephon stopped and surveyed the room again and noticed a figure crouched in a corner to his right. Xephon couldn't tell right away whether it was a man or a woman because he couldn't see their face; the figure was wearing a sand coloured poncho decorated with green cactuses and had a sombrero on it's head and was also wearing goggles of some type and had a cloth covering the rest of it's face. There was also a guitar strapped across it's back.

Xephon walked over slowly and took a seat opposite the figure.

"I assume you're with Hao?" Xephon asked stoically, the figure glanced up but did not reply. "I'm looking for someone named Opacho." Xephon continued unperturbed at the figures lack of response. There was silence for a few minutes as though the figure was waiting for Xephon to leave, finally the figure murmured, 'lounge.' Xephon nodded once and got up and made his way to the barman.

When Xephon approached him the barman turned and looked at Xephon malevolently, "I don't serve kids." He told Xephon with a snarl on his face.

"I never said I wanted to buy anything." Xephon told the man calmly.

"Then why are you in here?" The barman growled.

"I wanted to ask you for directions." Xephon said in the same calm tone.

"Then get a map kid." The barman snapped and started to turn away. Xephon sighed as his arm snapped out and he grabbed the barman by the throat and lifted him over the counter.

"Let's try this again shall we?" Xephon said with just a touch of annoyance.

"I'm going to put you down and when I ask you for directions you're going to give them to me. If you don't I will grab your head and slam it into the bar until you can't remember how to pour milk right. Understand? Just blink once for yes." Xephon told the barman as he struggled to speak, the barman blinked and Xephon put him down. "Good, now which way is it to the lounge?"

"It's on the second floor sir, third door on your right from the stairs." the barman gulped as he backed away.

"Thank you and remember there are people who don't have my amount of patience so consider yourself fortunate." Xephon told the frightened barman as he turned to go and look for the lounge.

Xephon found the lounge exactly where the barman had said it was and walked in. It was a large area covered with stools, chairs, couches and the occasional table. Looking around he saw large Chinese man sitting on one of the couches; the guy appeared to be talking to someone Xephon couldn't see so he walked a little closer and saw that there was a little kid sitting crossed legged on top of one stools opposite the large Chinese.

In between the two was a Chinese checkerboard and it appeared that the small child was losing. Xephon assumed that this was Opacho and started to make his way towards them but before he could get close enough to start a conversation was halted by the spirit of a giant Panda which rose up on its hind legs and toward above Xephon and started growling threateningly. Xephon ignored it and stepped straight through it.

"What is it Shion?" the large Chinese man asked a he turned his head to look at the fearsome spirit and he saw Xephon walking toward him. "We have an uninvited guest Opacho."

"I was told to look for someone named Opacho, I take it that would be you?" Xephon directed his question to the little African child on top of the stool who nodded and replied,

"What does stranger want with Opacho?"

"Firstly my name is Xephon, I suppose I am the newest member of Hao's group. I was told by Luca that you would be able to introduce me to the rest of the group."

Opacho nodded when he heard this and said something quickly in Chinese that Xephon was unable to pick up. The large Chinese man chuckled to himself and stood up and offered his hand which was five times larger than Xephon's. Xephon took and the Large Chinese man introduced himself.

"My names ZanChin, Opacho tells me that I am supposed to introduce myself in a fashion that you'll recognise."

In response to this Xephon let go of the large mans hand and gave a slight bow and said in Chinese, "I am pleased to meet you and you shouldn't judge a book by it's cover."

ZanChin raised his eyebrows and said, "Impressive, have you been to China before?"

Xephon straightened up and answered "A few times, my sister use to work there so I had to pick up the language."

ZanChin nodded at this and gestured to something behind Xephon, the large Panda spirit that had tried to halt Xephon before came strolling up to its master on all fours. "This is my spirit partner Shion, don't let his appearance fool you he's not as harsh as he appears." ZanChin gestured to the checker board behind and asked, "Do you play? Opacho hasn't been able to give me much competition lately."

"Opacho has won three times." Opacho said indignantly.

"Yes but we've had 12 games." ZanChin reminded him, he turned back to Xephon, "well how about it?"

"I'm afraid I don't know how to play." Xephon admitted in an uninterested tone.

ZanChin frowned and turned back to Opacho, "Well I guess I'll just have to keep playing -"

Opacho quickly cut in, "Opacho must introduce Xephon to everyone, Opacho has no more times for games." The African child abruptly jumped off the stool and started moving towards the exit. ZanChin chuckled again but offered no compliant and he sat himself down on the couch. Xephon stood where he was for a second, until Opacho called out to him from the doorway, "Is Xephon coming?"

They made their way around the hotel slowly, checking to make sure that they didn't miss anyone, in that time Xephon came to learn a lot about Hao and how he had saved each of his followers from whatever their situation happened to be. Normally Xephon disliked people who continuously talked but there was something about Opacho that stopped him from becoming annoyed. It wasn't the fact that he was a child; Xephon had met enough children to know that he could easily become annoyed by their slightest actions but this didn't seem to apply to Opacho. Xephon thought about it for a while and decided it was the fact that although Opacho was a child he had the ability to be extremely responsible and didn't talk about pointless topics but had the ability to include anyone in a conversation.

Opacho led Xephon outside and then round to a side of the hotel and they came to a type of sports/recreational area; there was a relatively large pool placed against the wall of the hotel with a few deck chairs which at the moment were empty. There were three girls standing at the edge of the pool looking up at one of the windows on the fourth floor of the hotel that was just above the pool. Opacho walked up to a girl that had long blue hair and was wearing a black tube top, "Kanna, Opacho needs to-" but the girl just ignored him. Opacho tried a few more times and then started poking the girls leg until she looked down at Opacho with an angry look on her face which disappeared when she saw it was Opacho.

"What do you want Opacho I'm kinda waiting for something here."

"Kanna Opacho needs to-"

"Yipeee!"

A red haired girl dived out of the fourth floor window and did a few somersaults before she grabbed her legs and did a cannon ball into the pool completely soaking all of those by the poolside, Opacho however was shielded by the much larger Kanna and as a result only got his feet wet, Xephon had still been standing a little ways away from the pool and therefore remained perfectly dry, he decided to stay back for a little while longer because it seemed that the blue haired girl was about to go totally berserk.

"Macchi what the hell did you do that for?!" The girl named Kanna stormed at the red head as she climbed out of the pool.

"It was fun, besides you're the one who dared me to do it." The girl called Macchi said as she grabbed a towel and started drying herself off.

"I didn't tell you to get us soaking wet!" Kanna cried in outrage.

"I know." Macchi said with a big grin on her face.

"Mari is not happy." said a blond haired girl as she started to walk menacingly towards Macchi, who gulped and started to back away, she turned to the third girl who had been standing by the pool and had not yet spoken, "Come on Mia you thought it was funny didn't you?"

"Yeah right up to the point when I got soaked!" The brown haired girl stormed. Xephon thought the girl looked familiar but he couldn't place her because her back was towards him.

Macchi glanced around nervously now looking for anyway out and she Opacho who was standing just behind Kanna, "Hey! Opacho! What are you doing here?" Macchi called out hoping to distract the other girls. Her plan worked and all the girls turned round to face Opacho who was still looking slightly annoyed by the fact that he was being ignored.

"Opacho came to introduce Hao's new follower." Said Opacho happily as he gestured behind him to where Xephon was standing.

"Um who are you talking about Opacho?" Kanna asked confused. Opacho turned round and saw that Xephon was no longer where he had been standing but he seemed to have disappeared.

"He was refferring to me." said a voice to Kanna's right, Kanna yelped and jumped backwards and fell into the pool. Everyone started laughing except for Xephon who only had a slight grin on his face as he watched Kanna come to the surface spluttering.

"Where the hell did he come from?" Kanna asked angrily as she started climing out of the pool.

Xephon gave his traditional almost-smile as he walked over and grabbed her hand to help her up then walked over to Opacho.

"Are these girls part of the group?" he asked.

Opacho nodded and turned to face the girls again and gestured to Xephon, "This is Xephon, Xephon has excepted Hao's offer to join Hao's cause." Opacho told the girls simply.

"I wouldn't go that far." Xephon mentioned to the little one.

Opacho ignored him and turned to each of the girls in turn and introduced them.

"This is Kanna Bismarch," Kanna was still quite wet and looked angrily at Xephon.

"I'd start running if I were you." she told him.

Xephon looked at her face with consideration before saying, "Bismarch? European?"

"Yeah, Germany."

Xephon smirked at this.

"Ein VergnЭgen, Sie Frau bismarch zu treffen."

Kanna raised her visable eyebrow, then sighed with a smile.

"Schlieъlich jemand anderer, mit dem ich sprechen kann ohne zu versuchen mich zu erinnern, in welcher Sprache ich sprechen muss." She said.

Opacho looked up at the two in curiousity before he continued his introductions.

"This is Macchi Matisse," Macchi was bouncing up and down on her toe's and had a big grin on her face.

"Hiya, pleased to meet ya!" Macchi then turned to the blonde haired girl and whispered "L'ho detto era carino."

The blonde haired girl nodded and whispered back, "Mari conviene." Kanna tutted as she heard this but didn't comment.

Opacho frowned and said, "Macchi is not being polite."

Xephon was silent for a moment and then walked up to the the blond haired girl to stand right infront of her and said, "Perche lei porta quella bambola?"

Both Macchi and the blond girl looked stunned for a second and then started blushing.

"Serves you right!" Kanna laughed.

Opacho was laughing at the looks on the two girls faces, he calmed himself down and gestured to the blonde haired girl.

"This is Mari Phauna." Mari was still too busy blushing to respond to the introduction.

Opacho gestured to the fourth girl and said "This is-" but he was cut off as both the girl and Xephon said 'we've met' at the same time.

The girl glared at Xephon who just studied her for a second before he said, "Your names Mai isn't it?""

"It's Mia and you know it!" the girl retorted angrily.

"What are you doing here? I was told Hao was searching for shamans of great talent and strength." Xephon asked in his usual emotionless voice.

Mia fumed when she heard this but couldn't think of anything to say so she just shoved past Xephon intending to storm off, but as she shoved past she got an idea and tried to push Xephon into the pool, however Xephon pivoted on his right foot so that Mia lost her balance and would have stumbled into the pool except that Xephon's arm shot out and grabbed her wrist so that she was leaning dangerously over the edge.

"You should be more careful, if I remember correctly you can't swim can you?" Xephon told her with a slight look of concern on his face. Mia gulped and nodded; she had nearly drowned when she was four and as a result had never learnt how to swim. She had also developed a phobia of deep water, although deep was anything that was above her shoulders, and the pool she noticed was over nine foot deep, funny how you never notice something like that until you think your going to drown.

Xephon slowly pulled Mia back from the edge and saw that her face had gone quite pale, but now that both her feet were on firm ground her colour came rushing back and she blushed embarrassed, she shoved Xephon out of the way and headed inside. Macchi and Mari followed her but Kanna stayed behind.

"How the hell did you know she couldn't swim?"

"She talks too much." Xephon responded simply.

-  
Note: German- "Ein VergnЭgen, Sie Frau bismarch zu treffen" means "A pleasure to meet you madam Bismarch."

"Schlieъlich jemand anderer, mit dem ich sprechen kann ohne zu versuchen mich zu erinnern, in welcher Sprache ich sprechen muss" means "Finally someone else I can talk to without trying to remember what language I need to speak in."

Italian-"L'ho detto era carino" means "I told you he was cute" "conviene" means "agree" "Perche lei porta quella bambola" means "Whay are you carrying that doll"


End file.
